The Central Bank is to increase the size of its regulatory staff, with the number of insurance regulators set to rise to 113 by the end of the year.

Speaking at the European Insurance Forum today, head of financial regulation at the Central Bank Matthew Elderfield said it would also expand its actuarial staff and appoint a director of insurance supervision to report directly to him.

"This addition of resources will give the Central Bank the capacity to do supervision more effectively, with specialist knowledge of the firms that we supervise and to allow a distinctly insurance – not banking – emphasis in our approach," he said.

Mr Elderfield said there were lessons to be learned from the financial crisis.

"The Irish financial crisis – a banking crisis – does present a lot of lessons to be learned about the way regulation and supervision generally didn't work effectively in Ireland," he said.

"The various reports on the crisis, and also my own observation, highlight not only banking-specific problems but also some fundamental gaps in the basic regulatory infrastructure that applies across all sectors. These include an absence of effective standards for corporate governance and fitness and probity and also weaknesses in how the Central Bank is resourced and organized for front line supervision."

However, he also noted that "the rule book for banks shouldn’t be Xeroxed wholesale onto insurance".

Mr Elderfield described the insurance sector as "one of the clear financial success stories" in Ireland, despite the downturn, and said the industry was "well positioned" to expand and provide a "platform for increased activity when the insurance cycle eventually does turn".

In 2009, more than 300 licensed insurance and reinsurance companies were operating in Ireland, writing €58 billion of gross written premium.