Regulator allows Quinn to resume UK motor insurance

The Financial Regulator has lifted a further set of restrictions limiting Quinn Insurance from trading fully in the United Kingdom.

The regulator said he would allow the insurer to resume its motor insurance business in Northern Ireland and Britain, which accounts for some 30 per cent of its business there.

The move follows last week’s lifting of the restriction on writing new business for provisional drivers in the United Kingdom.

“After careful consideration, the Financial Regulator has amended its direction with regard to Quinn Insurance writing motor business insurance in the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland),” it said in a statement this evening.

“This decision has been made following detailed discussions with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK and joint administrators of Quinn Insurance Limited (QIL) and permits the re-opening of certain motor business lines of QIL UK,” it added.

Workers’ representatives from Quinn Insurance earlier expressed anger and frustration at finding out through the media that up to 800 staff may be made redundant as part of a restructuring plan to address the company’s insolvency issues.

The joint administrators appointed to the insurer last month are expected to brief staff on details of their plan tomorrow which could see up to a third of staff, mainly in the Republic, lose their jobs.

Representatives of the insurer’s employee action committee said today it was an “utter disgrace” for employees to be learning about their future job security through the media.

They told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment the redundancies were “completely unnecessary” as the company’s core business remained profitable.

In a joint address, they said the insurer was losing up to 2,000 customers a day because of the restrictions imposed by the financial regulator on its ability to write and renew business in Northern Ireland and Britain. The insurer was being forced to turn away business which could help save jobs, they said.

“This situation is causing great anxiety and frustration to the employees who are on the coal face advising new and existing customers that we cannot take their business.”

If the situation was allowed to continue, they warned, the company’s customer base in the UK would be “completely eradicated” within 12 months.

Staff claim Quinn is losing €1.5 million a day because of the regulator’s decision.

Workers' representative Mona Bermingham said while staff respected the regulator’s motives in terms of the company’s solvency issues, they questioned his decision to impose a "blanket ban" on the insurer’s ability to operate in UK.

She said the UK operations could have been kept open, with segments closed if and when they were proven to be unprofitable, to safeguard as many jobs as possible. “This has put jobs at unnecessary risk. This is now, unfortunately, about damage limitation – minimising needless job losses while allowing the administrators to conduct due diligence on the business.”

The solvency issue, she said, was secondary matter that was being addressed and which would require time. “Time has been granted to the VHI time and time again in relation to similar issues and there was a certain hypocrisy and double standard in the way Quinn Insurance is being treated, “ she said.

The expected job cuts equate to one in three staff employed by the company and will be a major blow to the local areas where they work.

The redundancies will all be voluntary and will be implemented over a 12- to 15-month period, as elements of the UK business wind down. Informed sources said about 300 jobs will go immediately.

The majority of the job losses will be in the Republic, even though the restructuring relates primarily to its UK business. Much of the UK business is handled by staff at Quinn’s offices in Dublin, Cavan, Cork and Navan. There will also be job losses at Quinn’s offices in Enniskillen and Manchester.

The insurer employs about 550 staff in Enniskillen and 100 in Manchester. It has 2,400 employees in Ireland and Britain.

The North's minister for agriculture, Sinn Féin's Michelle Gildernew, today said she would be seeking an urgent meeting with the administrators and that it was vital the North's Executive and Irish Government acted quickly to save the jobs.

“The fact that this news broke through the media without the administrators having the decency to firstly inform the workers of Quinn Insurance is a disgrace," she said. "The workers should be consulted before any decision is taken and certainly before any information is released to the media. This sort of action leads to serious confusion and fear amongst the workers."

Fine Gael called on the administrators to reconsider the lay-off plans and instead fast-track a final decision on reopening product lines in the United Kingdom.

In a joint statement, three party TDs - labour affairs spokesman Damien English, Cavan/Monaghan TD Seymour Crawford and Meath East TD Shane McEntee - said the job losses will "absolutely devastate" the towns in which Quinn Insurance operates, and particularly the workers and their families.

"The sheer number of redundancies proposed will have a serious knock-on effect in these areas, and job losses in other sectors are bound to follow," they said.