Mr. Matthew Elderfield:

When I took up my post there were, if I remember correctly, approximately 350 staff. The figure has increased to about 620. When I did the first budget I thought we would have to increase staff numbers to about 725 but I no longer believe we will have to go that high. I think we will be able to trend down towards 600 as a couple of our tasks start to roll off. There is a lot of activity around dealing with the troika and EU-IMF programme and this will fade away over time. Certain regulation and supervision projects will also fade away over time. The principal way of becoming more efficient, however, and we have started to do so, is by putting more of our staff on front-line activities rather than processes. We still do too much using manual processes. We have been trying to automate different aspects of our work. In the area of regulatory information and the sending in of returns and financial information, much of this work involved sending in spreadsheets on pieces of paper. Almost all of this work is now done online. Under our fitness and probity framework, if one comes into the system and wants to become a director or work in the industry, one must file a questionnaire with us and be assessed. We now do this online in an automated process and we also plan to have our authorisation processes completed online. We will be able to reduce staff numbers when we bring these different elements online.

Staffing, which was under-resourced, has reached about the right level. The thing to watch out for after I leave, if one likes, is to make sure current quality is retained as markets get hotter, as they will at some point, and staff are not poached. The key issue is to retain good quality staff who have experience of the industry and are experienced supervisors.