Mr. Ciaran Phelan:

We have been very concerned about the pricing models over the years. As I said in my presentation, they started to drop significantly approximately four or five years ago, especially when several of the online distributors started to come into the marketplace. It was as if they had found a new way of pricing motor insurance. We took the view that the pricing was very aggressive. On several occasions, we talked to the Central Bank about the pricing models to ensure those responsible were happy that those pricing models were actuarially calculated and that there was a basis behind them.

We are price takers in the marketplace; we are not price makers. We take the price from the various underwriters that come into the marketplace. We saw aggressive pricing policies and we have lived through failures in the past. Many brokers were around when PMPA failed and certainly many were there when Quinn failed. The Quinn model was based on charging low, settling quick and hoping everything works out at the end of the day.