Mr. Jackie McMahon:

I thank the committee for inviting us in to discuss insurance within the community. This is something that is very close to our heart in FBD. We submitted a presentation and I would like to bring the committee through the first slide of that presentation. From a distribution point of view, FBD is very much in the heart of every community. We have a business model that supports that and we have 34 branches spread right across the island of Ireland. We have grown our branch network, we have gone from 32 to 34 so we see the branch network as a key differentiator in FBD to support our communities and that is different to our competitors' view of their business model. That is the first thing.

Second, in terms of a product perspective, we have protection products that are there to meet our customers' requirements. Thankfully we have 500,000 customers and we feel that we have very good products that meet their requirements locally, within the communities. Our people that staff the branch network are living in the community so they are very aware of what the issues are locally within the community and we think that is a great strength. Our good people in our branch network and our actual distribution reach puts us apart as being in the community and offering good products to our customer base. We support many initiatives right across the country within FBD, like the Ploughing Championships, the Tullamore show, the Young Farmer of the Year, Bloom in the Phoenix Park and also local shows with Charleville and shows in County Cavan as an example. Supporting local communities through our branch network by staff who are embedded in the community is hugely important to us.

From a risk management perspective, we offer more than just protections, solutions and products. We want to listen to our customers and work with them locally to come up with solutions that meet their requirements and by that I mean having good risk management practices so that we can ultimately reduce the frequency of claims within businesses and correspondingly reduce the level of premiums that we charge.

FBD is the only Irish indigenous insurer and it is very important for us as the executive team that we support businesses locally and as a business we feel we are set up to do that.