Central Bank deputy governor Derville Rowland has been tapped to join the executive board of the European Union’s new Anti-Money Laundering Agency (AMLA), according to a source familiar with the matter.
While the process is not yet formally complete, Ms Rowland will be one of five executive board members at the Frankfurt-based agency, according to the source, having been selected from a shortlist of 10.
The Central Bank declined to comment.
The appointees, including Ms Rowland, are set to be ratified by AMLA’s overall board on March 11, with a public hearing slated for around March 20. Assuming they are confirmed at that hearing, the appointees will then be put to the European Council for final confirmation. That step is seen as procedural, and it would be unusual for a proposed appointee not to the be confirmed at that stage.
It is expected that the five will be formally appointed before Easter, which takes place this year on April 20th.
The move will make Ms Rowland the latest top official to leave the Central Bank. Former deputy governor Sharon Donnery moved to be an ECB representative to the Supervisory Board of ECB Banking Supervision last year.
Ms Rowland is one of three deputy governors of the Central Bank, alongside Mary-Elizabeth McMunn and Vasilieos Maduros. Governer Gabriel Makhlouf’s seven year term is set to expire in the summer of 2026.
EU governments have already named veteran Italian central banker Bruna Szego as chair of the new AMLA. She had beaten Marcus Player of Germany, a former president of Financial Action Tax Force global anti-money laundering organisation, and Dutch national Jan Reinder De Carpentier, to secure the role.
The AMLA is expected to start operations from this summer and hire an initial 80 employees by the end of this year.
It will set uniform standards for compliance and supervision across the EU and serve as a data-sharing hub for national financial intelligence units. From 2028 it will directly oversee 40 of the EU’s riskiest financial institutions as measured by their systemic importance and exposure to illicit finance.
Ireland had bid to host AMLA but lost out to Germany’s financial capital 11 months ago. The agency is expected to have more than 400 employees by 2027.
Ms Rowland has developed a high profile domestically in recent years overseeing the Central Bank’s tracker-mortgage examination and subsequent enforcement actions against the country’s banks. This resulted in seven lenders being fined a combined €279 million for their roles in the overcharging scandal.
She is also ultimately responsible for the Central Bank’s role as competent authority in Ireland for the monitoring and supervision of financial companies’ compliance with EU laws covering anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism.
