Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 22 July 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Fergus Murphy:
The planning that would have been done in EBS - before my time and during my time - would have been top-down in terms of "We believe we should have 15%, let's say, 10%, whatever, of the mortgage market; we believe that based on the fact that the economy is going to do A, B and C next year - growth will be whatever". And those targets ... that group target then would have been, you know, the plan. Targets within the branches wouldn't have been articulated in a precise way. Clearly, collectively you have to make your plan but there wouldn't have been tags on people's foreheads, managers in branches, etc., "This is what you have to make. This is the volume you would have to do". Now, that's in the branches, which were owned by EBS. 80% of the EBS network is or was tied to broker agents. These are local entrepreneurs who are in the local community and they are, again, tied, as the description suggests, to EBS in terms of their activity. They are paid on a commission basis for the business they do. That is their employment. That is their modus operandi. Now, they do not have any credit approval authority. All credit, during ... in the past years and now, all credit is approved centrally. So, although they are paid on their commission basis, they cannot do business. It has to be approved centrally.
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