Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 26 May 2021
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Developments in the Insurance Industry: Discussion (Resumed)
Mr. Aidan Connaughton:
I will take that question first. AIG was involved in engineers' professional indemnity insurance up to 2015. We exited that market in 2015 following very heavy losses. One of the big issues we found with providing professional indemnity insurance for engineers related to certain areas of the Civil Liability Act. During the recession there were a number of issues with houses. There were builders who had gone bust. Under the Civil Liability Act, finding even a 1% element of liability means that the engineer or architect, as the case may be, ends up having the whole book thrown at them and the insurer has to stand behind that indemnity, which is exactly what the problem was before. Regrettably, there is not a whole lot more I can say about the matter except that AIG was in that sector and exited it in 2015 as a result of the heavy losses. It just did not make business sense for us to continue in the sector.