A Year in Review

2017 has proven to be a busy and productive year for the Connecting Cork initiative. Our ongoing engagement with both our business diaspora networks, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and ‘Team Ireland' throughout 2017, has resulted in the Connecting Cork message being presented to business professionals and audiences across the globe, from Ireland to the USA, UK, Australia and China.

• Throughout the year the Connecting Cork message has reached over 200,000 people/organisations via social media
• We have directly interacted with over 3000 people at national and international events that we have sponsored or spoken at in New York, Boston, Chicago, Cork, Sydney, London, Dublin, San Francisco and Shanghai
• Over 1600 people in our global audiences were targeted representatives of the Financial Services sector

Cork for Financial Services

Approximately one-third of those employed in IFS companies in Ireland are operating outside the greater Dublin area, and it is our firm belief that Cork has a huge capacity to grow its IFS footprint, given the depth and breadth of the activity that exists in the region already.  During the summer, our Financial Services Forum hosted a roundtable meeting for the new Minister for Financial Services and Insurance, Michael D'Arcy TD, at which we outlined the work of the Forum to date and reiterated our support for the government's IFS 2020 strategy and the work we can continue to do to promote the regional message. Our Forum has recently made a submission on the 2018 IFS2020 Action Plan.    

The Connecting Cork initiative has been successful in gaining good traction from our communication with external stakeholders in promoting IFS for for region. We have been recognised as the first regional collaboration in this sector to formally engage with government and industry bodies as a coordinated group on this scale, and have been cited as a best practice in representing the interests of the wider FS community in the region in the IFS 2020 Q1 Progress Report.  

The Connecting Cork initiative was presented at a number of external events and consultations during th course of the year including:

• The government’s IFS Brexit sectoral dialogue in Dublin Castle (April 2017)
• A Department of Finance Regional Consultation Forum (Gorey, Co. Wexford, October 2017)
• The Governance, Risk and Compliance Technology Centre Annual Symposium (October 2017)
• The inauguaral Scottish-Irish Finance Initiative (Dublin, October 2017)

The Cork FS Forum had an opportunity to demonstrate the Cork offering from an infrastructure and education/research perspective when we hosted the Irish Funds Council for their first ever Council meeting to be held outside Dublin, this autumn. There is increasing interest in the Cork offering, as a post-Brexit location for accessing the EU marketplace for the IFS sector, and a number of exciting new commercial developments are currently under construction in the city, as we continue to grow our capacity for accommodating new investors. There were a number of new announcements from the IFS sector in Cork during the course of the year (read more in article below).  

Plans for Connecting Cork activity in 2018 are well under way, and will kick off in the new year with a networking reception for the FS sector in London.

The updates in this newsletter will give you a flavour of some of our activities as well as some of the good news stories and announcements from multiple sectors in the Cork business community over the last few months.

We look forward to keeping in touch and would be happy to receive your feedback.

With best wishes,

Conor Healy,

CEO, Cork Chamber 

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