O’Donnell repeats demands for insurance companies to pass soaring profits back to hard pressed customers

Fine Gael Senator Kieran O’Donnell has today re-affirmed his call to insurance companies to immediately pass soaring profits back to hard-pressed customers through reduced premiums.

Seanad Finance Spokesperson Senator O’Donnell was speaking after today revealing further strong evidence that top insurance companies in the Irish market reported profit spikes well beyond their targets for 2018.

Senator O’Donnell said: “At today’s Finance Committee second hearing on insurance, I questioned Aviva, Zurich and AIG in detail on their profit margins and was amazed by some of their answers and the revelations I extracted.

“This follows on from my previous questioning on 4^th July last at the Finance Committee of other insurance companies, Allianz, Axa and FBD.

“Five of these six insurance companies – who are edging to over two thirds of Irish market share, totalled a combined super profit of €112 Million for 2018 over their targeted profit margin.

“This is an incredible figure and absolutely must be passed back to customers in reduced premiums with immediate effect.

“The figures I revealed today show Aviva and Zurich earning super profits for 2018 of €33m and €2m respectively above their targeted profit margins of 5% respectively. AIG Ireland, which is a branch of AIG Europe, indicated that they made a loss of €30m for 2018 on premium income of €280m, whilst they have a target margin of 5%.

“Aviva’s and Zurich’s actual profits here were €58m and €18m respectively with profit margins of 11.42% and 5.77% respectively.

“This follows on previous figures I revealed on 4^th July which showed Axa, Allianz and FBD earning super profits for 2018 of €50m, €7m and €20m respectively above their targeted profit margins of 5%, 6% and 8% respectively.

“Their actual profits here were €89m, €37m and €50m with profit margins of 11.56%, 7.41% and 13.44% respectively.

“We cannot have a situation where insurance companies continue blaming others for high insurance premiums, when at the same time they are making super profits themselves.”