Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 May 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Gerry Fitzpatrick:

The risks were the exposure they had, so what they didn't see, I think, within, they didn't foresee was the series of events that would cause a concentration risk to be ... to have such a calamitous effect in terms of the future. So, yes, the financial statements disclosed the concentrations and the funding model. I think they would have described, and I saw parts of what they described, which was a whole series of events that happened that meant the assumptions they'd made about be it soft landings or the impact of collateral values, they were unfounded, so what they didn't see was the consequences rather than the core data, so what we ensured was the core data was properly described. I think it's the consequences that wasn't, and they felt obviously, as I understand it, that core demographics, economic activity, soft landing, etc., meant that it wouldn't be as acute as it was, and, ultimately, they set out a capital plan which got submitted to the regulator, who was saying, "Well, you need to have a certain amount of capital put away in this ICAAP process the regulator does." And that looks at potential scenarios and stresses, and those stresses, unfortunately, weren't severe enough, in their evaluations.

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