Ms Derville Rowland:

It has been a risk that we have identified in our consumer protection risk assessment in the context of big data and innovation. For example, it was identified in our 2018 consumer protection risk assessment. Our process is to gather all relevant information about risks consumers face, some of which are outside our competence, but it is good and important that we have an awareness of the threats posed to customers. From that, we do a prioritised work programme to address specific and particular risks. The risk of differentiated pricing or that issue has been well known for long before that but the big data innovation has come in more recent times. Some of that is to the benefit of customers because innovation can bring cheaper prices. Telematics can be applied to someone's driving to get him or her cheaper policies while genetic testing can be good for some and bad for others so the availability of new information to make decisions can produce personalised pricing, which can be good or bad. As a result of that, we developed our work programme on insurance. Clearly, a key focus in Ireland is Brexit and the threat to insurance customers. We have been working on that but as part of our work on the cost of insurance problem at national level, we also developed policy initiatives to address this issue in part, which we did during the course of this year. For 2020, we have decided that this is work we would now develop in this way.