Central Bank of Ireland Portal — PIA, PIS, EIA, EIS returns
The return did not fail because the numbers were wrong. It failed because the filename was wrong, or a filing indicator was missing, or the same person tried to finalise and sign off. Irish payment and e-money institutions report through the Central Bank of Ireland Portal, which replaced the old Online Reporting System, and the four quarterly returns — PIA, PIS, EIA and EIS — arrive as XBRL instance files that the Portal accepts or rejects on mechanics before it ever looks at your capital adequacy. This piece sets out the returns, the filing route, and the five failure modes that cost firms a resubmission.
1. From ONR to the Central Bank Portal
The Central Bank of Ireland used to collect regulatory returns through the Online Reporting System, universally called ONR. It has been superseded by the Central Bank of Ireland Portal — “CBI Portal” in the guidance — and from the September 2023 reporting period onwards returns are accessed and submitted there. The legacy login page no longer leads anywhere useful.
The change was not only a new front end. Two things carried over and still trip people up. The institution code used to log in to ONR remains the identifier embedded in every XBRL filename. And the guidance still refers to the “Return File name on the ONR system” when specifying the three-letter return suffix. A firm reading only the Portal help text and not the file-upload guidance will not find where its institution code comes from.
Access is granted per user. Each institution has a Portal Administrator who sets up second-factor authentication, assigns permissions and manages users; ordinary users see only the returns their permissions allow. The Portal is also where a firm views and requests changes to its own institution details, and the Central Bank has said further regulatory and statistical services will move onto it.
2. The four returns
Payment institutions authorised under S.I. No. 6 of 2018 — European Union (Payment Services) Regulations 2018 (the “PSR”), and registered account information service providers, file the payment-institution pair. Electronic money institutions file the e-money pair. All four are quarterly, all four are XBRL, and all four are keyed to the institution’s own financial year-end rather than to calendar quarters.
| Return | Who files | What it carries |
|---|---|---|
| PIA — Payment Institution Accounts Return XBRL | Authorised PIs | Financial statements aligned to the EBA FINREP taxonomy with modifications |
| PIS — Payment Institution Supplementary Return XBRL | Authorised PIs and registered AISPs | Capital adequacy, own funds, users’ and safeguarded funds, transaction data, agents, ownership, conduct of business |
| EIA — E-Money Institution Accounts Return XBRL | Authorised EMIs | FINREP-based financial statements |
| EIS — E-Money Institution Supplementary Return XBRL | Authorised EMIs | The e-money equivalent of the supplementary set |
The submission due date is scheduled by the Central Bank on the Portal and is normally one month after the reporting date. The legal footing for the supplementary return is a notice of requirement to submit regulatory returns issued under Regulation 34(1)(a) of the PSR and section 22 of the Central Bank (Supervision and Enforcement) Act 2013 — the notice issued for the pre-XBRL webform return remains applicable to the XBRL version, so no firm should be waiting for a fresh notice before filing.
The current taxonomy is Central Bank of Ireland Taxonomy 2.2.2, applying to all reporting dates from 31 December 2023 onwards. Earlier versions survive only for resubmissions: 2.1.1 for periods from 30 June 2023 to 31 December 2023, and 2.1 before that. Validation runs against a published business-rules workbook, not against the taxonomy alone.
3. Not every firm files every template
The most expensive misunderstanding in the whole process is that a return is a single indivisible object. It is not. Each template carries a filing indicator in the instance file’s source, and the business rules are only evaluated for templates whose indicator is set positive. Templates you are not required to file must be marked false and must contain no data.
A registered AISP filing the PIS return, for example, submits only templates 06.01, 06.03, 07.01, 07.02, 07.03, 07.04 and 08.00. The capital adequacy, own funds, users’ funds, safeguarded funds and transaction data templates — 01.00, 02.00, 03.01, 03.02 and 05.00 — are marked false. An AISP that lets its software emit every indicator positive will fail the business rules for templates it never had to complete.
The accounts returns have their own carve-out. For both PIA and EIA, only templates 00.01, 01.01, 01.02, 01.03 and 02.00 are currently required. Templates 33.01–33.04 on the EIA and 06.01–06.04 on the PIA are carried over from earlier versions, are under review, and firms are asked not to select, complete or include filing indicators for them.
4. The filing route, step by step
Everything about the upload is deterministic, which is good news — each failure mode has a single cause.
The filename must be CNNNNNN_YYYYMMDD_XXX.xbrl: the institution code used for ONR login, the reporting date (not the submission due date), and the three-letter return code. So C123456_20220930_PIA.xbrl. In the Portal the user takes Returns, then View/Edit Returns, selects the return, chooses Load a File, and uploads.
Four checks run on receipt, before any accounting logic: the file is under 30MB (compress it if not); the date in the filename is not in the future; a return instance exists on the Portal for that reporting date; and the filename conforms. Fail any of them and nothing has been submitted.
The file then queues for processing against the published business rules. Two classes of outcome follow, in sequence: XBRL taxonomy blocking rules, which generate an error report and a rejection, and then within-return variance checks, which flag movements outside tolerance and must be acknowledged. The variance checks only begin from the second iteration of a given return, because they compare against the previous instance.
Success and rejection both email the Portal Administrator, not necessarily the person who uploaded — a detail worth designing around if your administrator is not in the reporting team. Rejections can be exported: the Export Errors option on the Rejected screen produces a downloadable list rather than making someone expand each error by hand.
Then two separate acts finish the job. Finalise requires every variance on the Variance Analysis Report to carry a written explanation — the report can be saved incomplete, but the return cannot be finalised. Sign-off presents a declaration that the information is complete and correct, and must be done by a different Portal user from the one who finalised. Only after sign-off is the obligation discharged and the return locked.
5. Formatting rules that reject good numbers
Four conventions in the guidance are worth writing into the mapping document, because each of them turns correct accounting into a rejected file.
- Units, not thousands. Every figure is entered in units — one thousand euro is
1000. Earlier webform versions of some returns took €000s, so a migrated template is the classic source of a thousand-fold error. - Dates as
YYYY-MM-DD, mandatory format. - Yes/No fields are True/False elements, in line with EBA and EIOPA practice.
- Percentages as decimals: 1% is
0.01, 100% is1.0. This bites hardest on the PIS own-funds calculation, where the scaling factor under Regulation 15 of the PSR is either 0.5 or 1 and may appear in an XBRL tool as 50% or 100%.
The own-funds section itself follows the PSR: Method A, Method B (payment volume, per Regulation 13) or Method C, with the Method A line for a Central Bank adjustment on material change in business under Regulation 12 reported as a monetary amount in units, not a percentage, and zero unless the adjustment actually applies.
6. Three worked examples
The rules above only become decisions when they hit a real filing.
Example one: the AISP whose first return was rejected twice. Facts: a registered account information service provider files its first PIS return; the XBRL tool has been pointed at the full PIS taxonomy and emits positive filing indicators for all templates. The file is rejected on blocking rules referencing capital adequacy and safeguarded funds — neither of which the firm holds. Rule: AISPs file only PIS 06.01, 06.03, 07.01, 07.02, 07.03, 07.04 and 08.00; the rest must be indicated false and carry no data. Action: reconfigure the tool to emit false indicators for 01.00, 02.00, 03.01, 03.02 and 05.00, and record the seven-template scope in the mapping document so the next quarter does not repeat it. Outcome: the file passes on the third attempt, and the firm now knows the rejection was about scope, not about data quality.
Example two: the safeguarding figure that arrived a thousand times too large. Facts: an EMI moves from the webform EIS to XBRL. The safeguarded-funds figure was previously keyed in €000s. The file passes every blocking rule — the number is internally consistent — but the Variance Analysis Report shows a movement of several thousand per cent against the prior quarter. Rule: all XBRL figures are in units; variance checks compare against the previous instance and must be explained before finalisation. Action: treat the variance report as the control it is, rather than a box to write “growth” in — investigate, correct the scaling, reload, and only then explain the genuine remaining movements. Outcome: the unit error is caught by the Portal rather than by a supervisor reading an implausible safeguarding balance.
Example three: the return nobody could sign off. Facts: a small PI has one person who prepares, uploads and finalises returns. On the due date the Sign-Off button will not accept them. Rule: the individual who signs off must be a different Portal user from the one who finalised, and each user signs in with their own credentials. Action: ask the Portal Administrator to provision a second user with sign-off permission — a director or the head of finance — well before quarter end, and treat single-user reporting as a filing risk, not merely a segregation-of-duties preference. Outcome: the two-person split becomes a designed control rather than a discovery on the deadline.
Is the Online Reporting System (ONR) still available?
No. Returns from the September 2023 period onwards are accessed and submitted through the Central Bank of Ireland Portal, and the legacy ONR login page no longer serves that purpose. The ONR institution code and the ONR return file names both survive inside the XBRL filename convention.
When are the quarterly returns due?
The due date is scheduled by the Central Bank on the Portal for each return instance, and is normally one month after the reporting date. Reporting dates follow the institution’s own financial year-end rather than calendar quarters, so two firms in the same sector can have different quarter ends.
Which taxonomy version applies?
Central Bank of Ireland Taxonomy 2.2.2 for all reporting dates from 31 December 2023 onwards. Taxonomy 2.1.1 and 2.1 remain in use only for resubmissions relating to earlier periods.
Does an AISP have to file the full supplementary return?
No. A registered AISP files PIS templates 06.01, 06.03, 07.01, 07.02, 07.03, 07.04 and 08.00 only, and must mark the remaining templates’ filing indicators false with no data in them.
What happens if a return is rejected on the due date?
Nothing has been submitted — a rejected file does not count as a filing. Because the rejection notice goes to the Portal Administrator, build the administrator’s inbox into the process, use Export Errors to get the full list at once, and leave working days between your internal target date and the Central Bank’s due date.
What are the annual obligations alongside the quarterly returns?
Audited annual accounts within six months of financial year-end, the auditor’s management letter, and the auditors’ statutory duty confirmation within one month of the date of the auditor’s report on the financial statements. These go to the Central Bank’s payment services supervision mailbox rather than through the Portal.
7. What to do, today
- Confirm who your Portal Administrator is, and that a second user has sign-off permission. One-person reporting cannot complete a filing.
- Write the filename convention into the export step, not into a checklist: institution code, reporting date, return code,
.xbrl. - Document your template scope explicitly — which filing indicators are true and which are false — and re-check it whenever a licence or service is added.
- Put the four formatting conventions (units,
YYYY-MM-DD, True/False, decimal percentages) in the mapping document and in a pre-submission check. - Diarise the Portal’s scheduled due date, and set the internal deadline far enough ahead to survive one rejection cycle.
- Treat the Variance Analysis Report as a detective control: investigate before you explain, since it is the last thing standing between a scaling error and a supervisor.
- Check you are on Taxonomy 2.2.2, and keep the older versions only for resubmissions.
Related: Ireland’s Central Credit Register — CIP obligations · CSSF eDesk and the S3 API · Testing a new return before first submission · What is a resubmission?
