Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 May 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Richie Boucher:

I think, you know, I've had advice from people. I've had recommendations and I've ... my job is to make decisions and to implement the decisions or recommend them. The business model, I think, is the biggest change we've made. The business model and that we must fund ourselves ... must fund ourselves in the markets. It must only be in areas where we have a perceived market advantage. The level of capital, the level of liquidity that we have, very significant changes in the reporting and management information on risk ... on concentration and risk. I think I provided to you a contrast. And this is, you know, I was a member of the team so I must obviously must take responsibility for that, as well as what happened subsequently. The contrast, in particular, between the kind of strategic papers we would've produced and the focus in those strategic papers, which was earnings per share, etc., which would have been an eight or nine-page document, in particular the stress test document provided to Mr. Baron, deputy governor of the Central Bank in 2006, and the document we now provide, which is 175 pages, has a huge focus on stress testing, on liquidity testing, on capital under different scenarios and testing ourselves in different scenarios. So that's that. I think it's not confined to Bank of Ireland. I think those processes and policies, procedures, etc., are taking place in banks across the world. But, you know, we've put a much bigger focus ... but I think the biggest focus is on ... business model.

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