The annual general meeting of FBD, held in Dublin on Thursday, heard from chief executive Tomás Ó Midheach who said that growth momentum has been sustained for the first four months of 2025 with gross written premiums 10% higher than the same time last year.

Outgoing chair of the company, Liam Herlihy, who retired after the meeting to be replaced by former Tirlán chief executive Jim Bergin, said that FBD was making good progress on dealing with claims from storm Éowyn, with 64% of claims already settled. He said that in total the insurer had 8,000 customers affected by what he called “the largest storm in FBD’s history”.

The cost to the insurer from the weather events at the start of the year is expected to be approximately €30m, net of reinsurance payments. Ó Midheach said that total payments to customers for the insurance claims associated with Éowyn would be in the region of €90m, with between €55m and €60m paid out to date.

The insurer’s solvency capital ratio – a key measure of the ability of an insurer to meet future payouts – was at 197% once the €30m hit from Éowyn was taken into account. Ó Midheach said that the company would be comfortable with a solvency capital ratio of between 150% and 170%, meaning FBD is well capitalised at current levels.

The AGM approved the payment of a dividend of €1 per share, in line with the payout in recent years. In each of the last two years FBD has also paid a second dividend of €1 per share which was announced after the half-year results. While no indication of whether that dividend would be forthcoming in 2025, the difficult start to the year probably makes it less likely.

Ó Midheach said “the absolute priority for us is the €1 annual dividend and we’ll give the special dividends when we can. This year is obviously challenging because we’ve had a tough opening to it, so we would have to be more considerate at the half year about whether or not we would be looking to do another distribution.”

On the outlook for climate change and how it might affect the insurer's business, Ó Midheach said that the climate models the company use suggest climate change “is not going to impact the manner in which we conduct our business over the next five years”. He said the modelling shows there isn’t going to be a dramatic impact on Ireland from climate over the immediate horizon.

He added that there could be extra costs for the insurer from climate change on a global level as those impacts could increase costs in the global reinsurance market which would feed through to FBD’s cost of doing business.

He said that FBD would always continue to insure what they are covering now.