Mr. Gerry Fitzpatrick:

Gosh, there is quite a lot of sentiment in that. First of all, the accounting standards and the preparation of the numbers are by the directors, so the accounting standards may ... are backward looking, it is a measurement of a point in time. IAS 39 meant that there was a particular constraint in looking at what was incurred at the time so it does represent, perhaps, a ... some limitation of what ... predicting expected loss might be. So I guess the new standard will allow some greater forward looking, but it still has to be an expected loss, not an unexpected loss. There is no standard that allows you predict the unexpected, and I think any view that there's a kind of forward future proofing or early warning system for things that might happen in the future, that won't be the case under even the expected loss standard, because you still have to have data and say, "What will this impairment likely turn out to be?" And you have to have an assumption, which is what the collateral value might be when you realise it in an impaired loan and, therefore, you have to have a view on the current state of the market, not the future state of the market.