Mr. Ronan Mulligan:

I will take that question. We have a role here. Somebody said no one is taking responsibility for anything. We are here to make a contribution and actuaries have a role in the process. I will try to answer Deputy Doherty's question, although I am not sure I have a more satisfactory answer. We have a role in the process. That role might be described as like setting the recommended retail price for insurance but we are not the exclusive owners of that price or the ultimate arbiters of the price the person will receive. Company strategy, the strength of its market position and the ability to actually secure that price in the market are involved. It will decline or hope to reduce its exposure in other parts of the market. Where brokers are involved, they will be given latitude in certain circumstances to adjust the price as well as they see fit, to try to hit targets, generate revenue and optimise that revenue. Actuaries have a role but not an exclusive one. In terms of some of the prices, 70% in two years, or 30% in the last year is an average number. Some people have not had anything like that while others have had far more.

Actuarial involvement in setting that price tends to try to segment the market into risk profiles that are as homogenous as possible and price for them in that pot. There is a distinction between the individual and the group, in that one cannot price an individual, but one can price groups. My opinion is not entirely fact based, but increases tend to happen in circumstances where there is a strategic underwriting decision about what one wants to target and not target. In terms of risk profiles, many of the large increases are not made in the plain, vanilla, large amounts of data-type instances. Rather, they tend to happen in more marginal cases, those being, very young drivers, very old drivers, perhaps very remote drivers or where circumstances have changed. In those marginal risk profile segments, there tends to be less data. An instance of a claim, in particular a large one, in one of those segments can suddenly cause the perception of that whole segment to change. This is potentially a technical reason for it happening. I am not saying that it is necessarily the reason, though. Insurance companies may be making underwriting decisions independently of this process. I am not sure what the reason is in every individual case, but it is a combination of a strategic decision owing to a desire not to provide cover in certain areas so as to manage the overall risk profile of the book and a technical, recommended retail price instance for marginal cases where there are not many people in a segment and a small change makes a big difference to the total risk.