Mr. Shane Kavanagh:

On becoming agents we became eligible for commission in respect of any business we executed as regards mortgages and savings. In 2011 we were told that lending had dried up and we were asked to focus on bank assurance sales, which is investment model selling. As agents, we had a number of concerns. We were a mutual building society and as such we did not have customers, we had members and we had a duty of care to them. We were previously told that approximately 10% of our client base were suitable for this kind of product but then that changed and we were told if the EBS was to survive we needed to sell more and ramp up customer numbers.