AIB Group plc (A5G) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the AIB Group plc Annual General Meeting 2022. [Operator Instructions] Pleased be advised today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mr. Conor Gouldson. Sir, you may begin.

[Audio Gap]. And please note, there are 3 exits from the room, the door at the back, which you entered from, this door to the right and the door at the back of the room over here to the right. If you wish to use the restrooms at any stage, please report to member of the security team located at each door and they'll direct you. There are no fire drills planned for today. If the alarm sounds, please make your way to the nearest fire exit in a calm manner. Upon exiting, please follow the instructions of the security staff and make your way to the evacuation point indicated. But I'd ask to please take note of the exit nearest to you. And finally, if I could just ask you to check now that your mobile phone is switched off for the duration of the meeting. Thank you very much. And I'll hand over now to our Chairman, Jim Pettigrew.

Thank you very much, Conor, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And can I extend a very, very warm welcome to you to the AIB 2022 Annual General Meeting. Welcome to everyone here in Molesworth Street . And of course, welcome to everybody who is listening in via the conference line medium as well. So everyone is welcome. My name is Jim Pettigrew, and I have the honor of being appointed the Chair of AIB in October of last year, the 28th of October last year. So this is my first Annual General Meeting of AIB Group plc. And it's really good, isn't it, that we're all able to come back physically for the first time since 2019. I hope you feel safe and comfortable in the environment this morning. Now we are starting with conformalities, I can confirm that we are core and so I can now, ladies and gentlemen, formally open the meeting. Now the notice of meeting, together with the 2001 annual report were posted to shareholders on the 1st of April of this year and of course, are available on our website. Now on the podium today with me, I have beside me our, indeed your, Chief Executive, Colin Hunt; and next to Colin, we've got the Chief Financial Officer, Donal Galvin; and on my extreme left here, you've got Helen Dooley, the General Counsel; and of course, you just heard from Conor Gouldson, the Company Secretary. All other directors other than Ms. Anik Chaumartin who is actually joining us by phone, are indeed present and actually sitting on the front row. And I thought today, given that we haven't had a physical meeting for 2 years, there's a number of new nonexec directors here as well, just thought it would be good if I quickly introduce them to you. So starting, first of all, with Basil Geoghegan. So you just let -- yes, Basil, Tanya Horgan and Sandy Kinney Pritchard, Sandy is Chair of the Audit Committee. Carolan Lennon. She is, of course, our SID. Elaine MacLean, Chair of Remuneration, Nominations Committee and indeed, the designated NED for Employee Relations as well. Andy Maguire is with us here as well. Here's Andy. And of course, you'll be familiar with Brendan McDonagh, who is, of course, Deputy Chair and Chair of the Risk Committee as well. Helen Normoyle is [ NED, Chair ], and Helen actually chairs the Sustainability Committee of the corporation. Fergal O'Dwyer and Ann O’Brien is here. Ann plays a very important part, I should mention as well, of course, as Chair of the Technology Committee. So Ann O'Brien is here as well. And finally, we've got Raj who is here. So there you are. Hopefully, you've got a chance to chat to the directors before the meeting, but of course, there'll be an opportunity afterwards after the formalities perhaps and we can catch up with you then. So I will now invite -- in a minute or 2, I'm going to be inviting Colin to give us an overview and give an update of performance in 2021, and he'll also address the quarter 1 trading update, which was just released today. So you've got that to look forward to in a couple of minutes. We also have colleagues, you probably have seen just as you come in from our customer care team, Mr. Conor Maguire and Sita Ramkissoon. So please, if you at any point you want to raise on relevant matters with them, please go and find them. They are here and available after the meeting. Now in this statement -- in my statement, indeed, in the 2021 annual report, I recorded my thanks to Brendan, the Deputy Chair. And you'll recall, he has fulfilled the role of acting chairman of your company at the Group's request until my appointment. And I would just like to repeat a big thank you to Brendan with genuine sincerity from myself and from all -- everybody at AIB. So a big thank you, Brendan. Now one of the most visible measures of the company's success, of course, is an outlook really for the future is its ability to reward its shareholders through dividends. And so it's very pleasing to be able to announce that the Board is recommending a 4.5 cent for the financial year 2021. And that is going to be a proposal in this meeting just for your approval today. Now this is the first dividend resolution to be approved to shareholders since 2019. At the time of our 2021 results announcement, we also announced a share buyback amounting to EUR 91 million, which is subject of a further update, which Colin will be updating you on in a minute, yes? And this will represent dividend distributions in total of EUR 213 million, representing a 40% payout of our 2021 earnings. Now in my early months just of being Chairman of AIB, a few things are very clear to me. The central, in particular, the central role of sustainability is playing in informing the group's strategy and the decision-making by the Board and indeed, the Executive Committee. Now if you haven't already, I do encourage you all to go into the website and look at the sustainability report. It's an excellent report. I'm also very grateful for shareholders, who've voted to receive the annual report, right, through technology and digital rather and access through the website, helpful from the sustainability. In fact, we've reduced sending out actually from 8,000 to 9,000 annual reports down to 2,000. So really not only just saying things in sustainability, actually doing things. Now Brendan informed you at the meeting last year that a number of additional appointments to the Board were in training. In May, we announced the appointment of the Group CFO, Donal, as Executive Director, and the Board also made a number of nonexec appointments as well. Anik Chaumartin, former partner with PwC, joined in effect from the 1st of July. Tanya Horgan, former Chief Risk Officer with Flutter Entertainment Plc with effect from the 14th of September. Jan Sijbrand, Former Executive at ABN AMRO and Chairman for Supervision at the Central Bank of the Netherlands also joined in effect from the 14th of September. So congratulations to all these individuals. And as I mentioned earlier, I joined the Board on the 28th of October. I'm now ready to hand over to Colin for an address to the shareholders present here at the venue and listening, obviously, on the conference line. And I'm very pleased to say it's all about implementing a case, I think, Colin, our strategy inorganically, organically, real momentum, I think you would talk about, and indeed, of course, an update on a very strong Q1 update we've just released this morning. So Colin, without any further ado, over to Colin, our Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you very much, indeed, Chairman, and good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. It's great to welcome back those of you in person here today for the first time since the prepandemic days of 2019 to update you on the Group's performance for 2021 and for the first quarter of this year. You may have seen that we released a trading statement to the market at 7:00 this morning. Notwithstanding heightened geopolitical risk and uncertainty internationally, the domestic economy here in Ireland remained strong. We are, however, very cognizant that higher prices are affecting our personal business and corporate customers this year as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has further contributed to inflation, higher energy costs and supply chain issues. We aim to continue supporting our customers and the wider economy through the challenges ahead just as we did during the pandemic. Last year was a year of very significant progress across the Group, despite the uncertainties related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The domestic economy here in Ireland performed much better than expected, due to the successful vaccine rollout, sustained government support for individuals and businesses and society's willingness to adapt to restrictions. Against this backdrop, we reported a strong set of results with a pre-exceptional profit before tax of EUR 947 million, a robust CET1 capital position and solid growth in new lending, clear evidence of our ability to play a key central role in this country's economic recovery. On front of the profits generated and in line with our dividend policy, we proposed a distribution to our shareholders of EUR 213 million, including EUR 122 million in cash form and EUR 91 million through a share buyback program. And I'm pleased to announce the commencement of that share buyback program today. I'm also pleased to report that the Group recorded a strong financial performance in the first quarter of this year, and we are confident of achieving our full year guidance for 2022. Total income increased by 4% compared with the same period last year, enhanced through our diversified income streams, while other income increased by 14%. We have maintained our continued focus on cost discipline with operating expenses broadly similar to the first quarter of 2021. Our EUR 230 million cost savings program is on track with a number of full-time employees unchanged since December 2021 remaining at 8,916. In the first quarter of this year, total new lending was EUR 2.8 billion, which is up 18% compared with the same period in 2021 with very positive trends evident across retail and capital markets. The Irish mortgage market continues to perform strongly in the first quarter of this year with total drawdowns for the market as a whole, up 17% on the first quarter of 2021. Our new mortgage lending as AIB Group was EUR 800 million in the quarter, which was up 58% on the same quarter in '21, which was our highest Q1 new mortgage lending in 3 years. As of the end of March, AIB's mortgage market share stood at 32.2% year-to-date, and momentum is strong going into the remainder of the year. The reopening of the Irish economy drove an improvement in consumer and business sentiment and led to a 24% increase in new personal lending, while new lending to SMEs in Ireland was up 3% in the first quarter. With continuing momentum from the second half of last year, Capital Markets had a strong Q1, particularly in corporate banking and real estate finance. We continue to support our customers on the transition to a lower carbon economy and green lending accounted for 22% of total new lending, while our Green Mortgage product represented 23% of new Republic of Ireland mortgage lending. Our nonperforming exposures, a key area of focus for the Group in the past decade decreased to EUR 3 billion or 5.1% of gross loans, the lowest level since the onset of the global financial crisis and down from 5.4% at the end of December last year, and we remain well on track to achieve our 3% target by the end of 2023. Our fully loaded CET1 at the end of the first quarter was 16.6% and reflects the impact of the proposed EUR 91 million share buyback. In Q2, we expect the acquisition of the Ulster Bank Corporate and commercial loans to reduce our CET1 by some 130 basis points. Our strong capital position, which is well ahead of our medium-term target of greater than 13.5%, enables us to invest in our business, pursue return accretive inorganic opportunities and make distributions to our shareholders. 2021 was a year a very significant progress on previously announced inorganic initiatives. Goodbody rejoined the group on the 31st of August 2021 and now significantly enhances our wealth and capital markets offering. We are very pleased both with the acquisition and the pace of its integration into the Group. We received Competition and Consumer Protection Commission clearance for the acquisition of some EUR 3.7 billion, Ulster Bank corporate and commercial loans, which will result in the transfer of 5,000 customers and approximately 280 Ulster Bank employees to AIB Group over the coming months. As intended, we will commence the migration of loans on a phased basis over the coming months to ensure a smooth transition for both customers and employees. We've also entered into exclusive discussions with NatWest Group for the acquisition of some EUR 6 billion of Ulster Bank performing tracker and linked mortgages. However, any potential transaction remains subject final negotiations and agreements. On our joint venture that we proposed with Great-West LifeCo, we're making good progress with Competition and Consumer Protection Commission clearance already received and the Central Bank of Ireland licensing process is now underway. This initiative will significantly enhance our retail wealth proposition across savings, life, pensions and investments, clear benefits for our customers and revenue diversification. We also acquired a 50% stake in Autolease Fleet Management, trading as Nifti, making an initial investment of EUR 6 million to help provide more sustainable car leasing options to business and personal customers. We will provide further funding to support the expansion of this business as it works with customers switching to electric and hybrid vehicles. As the Chairman has said, sustainable communities is a key strategic pillar for our group. The environmental, social and governance agenda is being embedded as part of the very fabric of this organization and how we conduct our activities day in, day out. Last year, we doubled our climate action fund to EUR 10 billion, and we continue to expand our green lending, which accounts for 19% of all new lending in 2021 as the fastest-growing part of our loan book. We, as a business, reduced our own Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 19% in 2021, down 71% of a 2009 baseline, and we've set ourselves the target of being net zero in our own operations by 2030, and we are well on track to achieve that very, very important objective. We gave further practical effect to our commitment to social progress, particularly in relation to the greatest issue facing our society today, the housing deficit. We announced a new EUR 500 million social housing fund to provide 3,000 social housing units in Ireland in the coming 3 years. We published our Social Bond Framework in 2021. And in March of this year, we issued Ireland's first Social Bond, raising EUR 1 billion for investment into projects with clear social benefits. We also became the title sponsor of GOAL Mile and we donated an initial EUR 0.25 million to support GOAL's Ukraine Emergency Appeal as part of an overall EUR 0.5 million commitment to support those in need. In addition, we are matching all staff donations. Our purpose, our values and our people are the cornerstones upon which our culture is built. Empowering our leaders and encourage them to deliver organization values and associated behaviors is key to evolving our culture. We are committed to creating an inclusive and supportive organization that delivers for all our customers and creates an environment in which our employees also develop and thrive. In 2021, we were the first Irish bank to be awarded a silver accreditation by the Irish Center for Diversity, Ireland's only equality diversity and inclusion performance mark. And despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, our customer-facing colleagues continued to work tirelessly supporting our customers while the majority of our colleagues continued to work remotely. Progress was also made on our Future of Work plans. And in December of last year, we defined our future Hybrid working model. Following our return to profitability in 2021 and the strong Q1, 2022 will be a pivotal year for the Group as we close out legacy items, integrate inorganic initiatives and work towards achieving our strategic goals. While the domestic macro environment is supportive of Irish economic growth forecast at 5%, we remain alert to the increased geopolitical risk and uncertainty in the global economy. But with a resilient balance sheet and strong business pipeline, we are confident in our outlook as we focus on implementing our strategy at pace and supporting our customers. We've set out clearly our strategic priorities, and we are relentless in implementing our plans as we build an ever stronger and more resilient AIB group in the interest of all our stakeholders. Thank you.

Well, thank you very much, Colin, for that very comprehensive round up really and on progress and update on the activities of the bank. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we now come to the formal part of the meeting where we consider and indeed vote upon resolutions. There are actually 28 resolutions today before us. Now that seems rather a lot that we have to vote individually for all the directors as well. So we'll move through this in an efficient manner as is appropriate. Now as usual, you will have opportunities to ask questions in a few moments. And of course, if you prefer just to ask these questions in private, then please contact the company secretary afterwards. I'll be around as well afterwards and we can try and address these questions then, yes? And indeed, you can e-mail them as well [indiscernible]. And the e-mail address is in the notice of the meeting. Now between myself and the senior executives present, we will do our very, very best to answer your questions. But we have more information is required, we may say, look, we will get back to you and provide you details at the end or after the meeting. And also, can I just -- one respectful plea, let's keep questions focused obviously on the agenda of the meeting, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. As a matter of procedure, as I said earlier, we will be proposing 28 resolutions in 1 section and taking questions in relation to all 28, we'll do that once we're through the resolutions, yes? You're entitled to ask any question on any resolution in that question-and-answer session, and I hope this makes it easier really for you. So I seek your patience as the question time will come later once we get through these resolutions. Thank you. The Board really believes it is important that the intentions of all shareholders who register a vote are taken into account. And therefore, I am now calling a poll on each of the resolutions we propose. We'll be voting by poll on each of them separately at the end of the meeting. And that way, all the proxies received prior to the meeting will be taken into account. The full text of each resolution is contained in this notice of the meeting, which hopefully you all received. It's on Page 10 to 14. We'll come to questions after I propose all the resolutions. So let's start with the first resolution, ladies and gentlemen. And that is on the agenda related to the 2021 Annual Financial Report, which I will propose shortly as an ordinary resolution. Before I do that, I do need to turn to the independent auditor's report. This is very detailed -- and is set out on Pages 217 to 228 inclusive in the annual report. And it's obviously been published on our website. Now John McCarroll from our Auditors -- where is John? Here's John there, Deloitte is present here in Molesworth Street and most welcome, John. You're very welcome. However, I propose that with the consent of members present here today, we take the audit report as read. Is everybody comfortable with that. Yes. Thank you. I see nodding heads. So can I just thank all of you for that. And I would therefore propose the following resolution that, following a review of the company's affairs and financial statements for the year ended 31st December 2021, together with the reports of the Directors and the Auditor thereon, received and considered. So that's the first resolution, ladies and gentlemen. We move on to Resolution #2. And this relates to the declaration of a final dividend. So I'm pleased, as I mentioned earlier, and Colin touched on, I'm pleased to report and we propose an ordinary resolution that a final dividend of 4.5 cent per ordinary share be declared for the year ended 31st December 2021. Resolution 3 deals with auditors' remuneration. The work of the auditor and the level of audit fees are reviewed on behalf of the Board by the audit committee. The committee is satisfied that the effectiveness of the auditor and the fees are indeed appropriate. I'm pleased that to propose as an ordinary resolution to authorize the directors to fix the remuneration of the auditor. We can now move on to Resolution 4, and this relates to the continuation in office of Deloitte as an auditor. Under Irish company law, the statutory auditor is automatically reappointed, except in very specific and limited circumstances which do not stress pertain here. Accordingly, this vote is an advisory vote only. So I'm proposing the following ordinary resolution as an advisory resolution that the continuation in office of Deloitte as auditor of the company until the conclusion of the next Annual General Meeting of the company be considered. We now move on, ladies and gentlemen, to Resolution #5, and this deals with the election and reelection of the Directors. Now as advised in my letter accompanying the Notice of Meeting, AIB Group plc is required to comply with the provisions of the Irish listing rules, and of course, the U.K. listing rules relating to controlling shareholders and the election or reelection of Independent Nonexecutive Directors. Now as the Minister of Finance in Ireland is a controlling shareholder for the purposes of the listing rules, that is the minister exercises control over more than 30% of the voting rights of the company, certain resolutions, Resolutions 5 a, c, d, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, o and p must be approved by a majority of both the shareholders of the company and the independent shareholders of the company, that is shareholders of the company who are not controlling shareholders. The Board is confident, may I say, that all directors are experienced and knowledgeable and that they each bring valuable skills to the Board. An objective perspective in all business matters that come before the Board. The Board considers the contribution of each of the individual directors and the Board, as a totality, as a whole, and this continues to be important in the long-term sustainability success of the company. Now biographical and details on the bios of all Directors that are standing for reelection or election here set out on Pages 36 and 39 of the annual report. So it's there for you to inspect and review. So I now come to actually the formalities of actually the proposal here a separate ordinary resolutions at each of Anik Chaumartin, Donal Galvin, Basil Geoghegan, Tanya Horgan, Colin Hunt, Sandy Kinney Pritchard, Carolan Lennon, Elaine MacLean, Andy Maguire. Brendan McDonagh, Helen Normoyle and of course, Ann O'Brien, Fergal O'Dwyer. I'm leaving the bank at the moment because I can't propose myself, ladies and gentlemen, so I'm going to ask Colin to do that in a second. Jan Sijbrand and, of course, Raj Singh. So these be elected or reelected as a Director. I will now just stand aside and ask Colin to propose myself.

I proposal that Jim Pettigrew will be elected as the Director.

Thank you, Colin. But that would...

[indiscernible]

Yes, you can, indeed. Thank you very much for that. Moving on to Resolution #6, ladies and gentlemen. And this is another advisory resolution, which deals with the remuneration of the company's Directors'. And again, of course, this is fully disclosed in the Annual Financial Report. So I propose the following ordinary resolution as an advisory resolution that the Directors' Remuneration report as set out on Pages 205 to 207 in the Annual Report be considered. Resolution 7 is an advisory resolution, ladies and gentlemen, as well. And this, again, is in relation to Remuneration Policy. I propose as an ordinary resolution that the Remuneration Policy set out on Pages 201 to 202 in the Annual Financial Report be considered. All right, we're just about halfway through, so we'll move on to Resolution 8. And these 8 through to 12 are fairly technical in nature, ladies and gentlemen, quite long-winded, unfortunately, but they're set out in detail in the Notice of the Meeting and explained in the accompanying letter. So I do hope that helps the shareholders. They're considered, may I stress, to be absolutely in line with market practice, the extent of relevant guidelines and principles. So with the consent of the members present here at the meeting, I propose that we take the full text of these resolutions as read, and I will instead describe briefly the purpose of each of these resolutions for you now. Resolution 8 is an ordinary resolution, which I propose to authorize the Directors to allot and issue new shares should that, of course, need arise. Nine, I propose resolution 9(a), which -- this is a special resolution, which, if passed, would allow for the limited disapplication of Pre-Emption Rights, while empowering the Directors to allot equity securities for cash, otherwise, than in accordance with statutory pre-emption rights. This limited disapplication is restricted, ladies and gentlemen, just 5% of the current issued share capital. Resolution 9(b), this is another special resolution, which if passed, would allow for limited disapplication of Pre-Emption rights, again, proposed to empower the Directors to allot equity securities for cash to fund an acquisition or what the Directors would determine to be a specific capital investment. This, again, limited disapplication is also capped at 5% of the Company's issued share capital. Tabling these 2 resolutions is the way that it's recommended by the Pre-Emption Group, which monitors the protection of shareholders' rights in the U.K. and Ireland. Resolution 10 is proposed by me as a Special Resolution to authorize the market purchase by the company its own shares, again, limited up to this time 10% of the Company's issued shares as of today's date. Resolution 11 is a Special Resolution to authorize the company to reissue shares purchased by it and not cancel these treasury shares. If granted, the minimum and maximum prices at which treasury shares may be reissued shall be determined in accordance with this resolution and, of course, the Company's Articles of Association. I now propose Resolution 11. Resolution 12, an ultimate one, is also proposed by me as a Special Resolution to authorize Directors to call a General Meeting other than, may I say, an Annual General Meeting such as this or a meeting for the passing of a Special Resolution on the appointment of a Director of not less than 14 clear days' notice. I wish to assure you all that the convening of an extraordinary general meeting at short notice would only ever be done in exceptional circumstances. And we move, ladies and gentlemen, on to the final resolution on today's agenda which is Resolution #13. This again is a special resolution. And this resolution if passed will renew the authority of the Company and this was granted by you for the first time at the 2021 AGM. And this is to make off-market purchases of ordinary shares from the Minister for Finance or indeed his nominee pursuant in the Directed Buyback Contract entered into the Company and the Minister on the 3rd of June 2021. I wish to assure you that the exercise of this authority now or indeed in the future will only be contemplated by your Board and undertaken if it considers that such a transaction will be in the best interest of shareholders as a whole and relevant regulatory approvals are, of course, in place. Ladies and gentlemen, that completes thank you for your perseverance with that. There are a number of resolutions I indicated before. So thank you for listening to that, but it is important that these formalities are completed appropriately. And -- so thank you for that. We now turn, as I promised, to questions. We'll be opening up for questions. And what I'd like to do first with -- in this business -- first, I'll take the questions, there have been some that have already been submitted to us in advance of the meeting, and I will ask our Company Secretary, Conor, here just to read these out on behalf of the shareholders. So Conor, over to you.

Thank you, Chairman. Thank you very much. So we received questions in the advance 2 shareholders, a total of 4 questions, so I have them here and have our responses also. So the first is from a shareholder, [ Hugh McGuire ] and he says, "I wish to bring up the following issue at the AGM. The call waiting time to speak to a representative is totally unacceptable. On 21 April, I contacted AIB on telephone number given, I waited 39 minutes to speak to an AIB member of staff. However, when the member of staff answered, she apparently couldn't not hear me and she hung up. I re-dialed the number again and after 37 minutes got through to a person who told me that AIB's Internet systems were down and that was the reason I had an issue. So there's no information on the AIB website stating there was an issue with Internet or phone banking. AIB wasted at least 90-plus minutes of my time, my time trying to resolve the issue and then my time on the phone with AIB. This is not the first time I've contacted AIB and had similar waiting time to speak to an AIB member of staff. Every time I contact ABI, I get the following message: we are experiencing higher-than-normal volumes of customer queries, we apologize for the delay, and thank you for your patience, a member of staff will be with you shortly. There's also no phone service provided after 5:00 p.m. until 9 a.m. the following day. Banking issues are not confined to these hours. The COVID restrictions have been lifted, yet AIB restrictions have not been lifted. The level of service to customers must be improved and AIB must give an assurance at the AGM that the all customer phone calls will be answered by a member staff within 5 to 10 minutes of the phone call by the customer. Can you please confirm that the above will be read out and answered at the meeting? So our answer to Mr. McGuire is that we are very sorry with your experience Mr. McGuire or the experience of any of our customers. The Board is acutely aware of the impact of call waiting times on customers and earlier this year, specifically requested that relevant data be included in its core information package, so this can be monitored. We are determined to get this right. On the day in question, we did have a slow performance on our Internet banking, which did drive a higher-than-normal volume of calls to our phone lines. In the first 3 months of this year, our team in phone banking handled over 760,000 calls from customers. A number of factors are influencing these volumes and the time necessary for each call. And these include increased security measures driven by regulatory changes and the technical support required by customer and these are driving higher volumes. These are also relatively complex calls and have taken longer to resolve for customers. And also ongoing fraud-related costs driven by various scams, which we all read about daily. I want to assure you, the call center is a priority for us to deliver good customer service. We are currently deploying between 500 and 1,000 staff will be trained up during April and May as part of our overall response to the transformation of the Irish banking landscape. We will continue to focus on this area until we get service levels back to the correct level. Another shareholder, Chairman, sent in 3 questions. Shareholders is [ Jerod Cochran ] The first question is how many Ulster Bank tracker mortgages is AIB hoping to acquire as part of the Ulster Bank departure plan? Will the latest plan to acquire the Ulster Bank tracker loans also require approval and be subject to final agreement with Ulster Bank parent company, NatWest and regulatory approval by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission? Our answer is, while we were very pleased to announce last week that we are in exclusive negotiations with NatWest Group plc to acquire the Ulster Bank tracker mortgages, we were only able to comment further on this today. And new transaction remains subject to negotiations and agreement and we will make a further announcement with more details if and when this is required. And the second question is, as Ulster Bank and KBC, you need to find new current account providers. Has AIB made any preparations or hired new staff to make way for the unprecedented demand for new accounts? And this relates in some way actually to Mr. [ McGuire's ] question earlier and the response given. So as advised in response to [ Mr. McGuire ] we are currently deploying between 500 and 1,000 staff who will be trained up during April and May as part of our overall response to the transformation of the Irish banking landscape. This will include the hiring of temporary staff as acquired, the redeployment of 300 existing staff, setting up a dedicated account opening center, the deployment of additional staff in our call centers and continuing to invest in enhancing our digital products and services. The final question is regarding the proposed distribution of EUR 213 million or EUR 0.78 per share, which represents a 40% payout, when is AIB likely to start returning excess capital to the legal shareholders? Distributing surplus capital should be a key milestone for the bank and will the excess capital to be returned post execution of the Ulster Bank portfolio acquisition? Our response is the Board's dividend policy is for a payout of between 40% and 60% of after-tax earnings. Any consideration by the Board of a distribution of any nature to shareholders is made annually have in regard to the Group's performance and the capital requirements of the Group. So there are all the questions, gentleman. I hope I have given full answers.

Yes. Thank you, Conor. It's very important to get the questions and very importantly answering them. So thank you for that. Ladies and gentlemen, we now are ready, I think, to take any questions from shareholders who are present here and just some housekeeping things. If you've got a question and I already see hands going up, please raise your pink attendance card. A member of the team will give you a microphone. Please state your name before asking your question. If you're a proxy or your corporate reset, please make sure you say both your name and that the shareholder you represent. And remember, as we've seen before, we very respectfully ask you to keep the questions related to the business of the meeting Yes, I see...

My name is Brendan Burgess. I have been coming to these AGMs for some years. And I've been trying to make one point, which has been completely lost. So I'm hoping with the new Chairman, we must make a bit of progress. Treating customers fairly it's not incompatible with making profits. This is something really, really important that I wish you to convey. I wish you to understand, first of all, and you can pay it to the rest of your Board. And slogans like, We Pledge To DO MORE at the heart of customers' lives and backing our customers. These are hollow and offensive to the 12,000 customers that your bank tried to cheat out of their trackers. And this is not a legacy issue, particularly because, and I'll come back to it later, your acquisition of -- your proposed acquisition of Ulster Bank mortgages. Let me just -- as you're new to this position, let me just explain a little bit of what happened. There were 6,000 customers who had a fixed rate mortgage contract, which said at the end of the contract, you will have a choice of a fixed rate, a variable rate or another -- or a tracker rate. What AIB did was they said, we no longer offer tracker mortgages. So we're not offering you a tracker mortgage. They had withdrawn for new customers. And then when this case was argued they said, well, just because your contract says you have a choice of this, doesn't mean we have to offer you. Then you came up with a brilliant idea, well, after the Central Bank told you to pay each of these people, EUR 1,500 or EUR 1,600, you cannot put a brilliant idea. This was not a breach of contract. This was a service failure. And then best of all, best of all, was you said, well, even if we did break the contract, even if we should have offered them to tracker, they didn't lose out because although we were charging standard variable rate customers, the highest mortgage rates in the Eurozone, 4%, where the tracker rate would have been 12%. So if we give them trackers, so are they're lucky they didn't get trackers. This was the arguments put forward by your bank. And what I can't understand, and I haven't been given an explanation for this. The Board approved all of those arguments. I can imagine that a brainstorming session, some clever lawyers coming up with these stupid arguments. But I can't understand how a board and you've set out the qualities of this Board, I can't understand how they didn't stand up and say, "Hang on a moment, if the contract says, you will have a choice, then surely, we have to offer them that." How come they didn't say, "Well, the fact that you've stopped offering trackers to new customers has no effect on people who already have a contract, which has -- gives them a requirement or an option of getting a tracker." And I mean how did people -- and these people are still on the Board. I mean, they're not -- this is not a legacy issue because these people, Brendan, as far as I can work out, Brendan, Helen and Sandy, Carolan and Elaine, they were all on the Board that didn't ask these questions. They didn't say, "Why on earth are we saying in public that you have been charged 12% when we were already charging the highest rate of 4%." This makes no sense to me. Back a few years ago, when Francesca McDonagh was appointed the Chief Executive of Bank of Ireland. She came in and she looked at the tracker issues. She exercised independence of mind. She exercised personal authority and personal confidence and competence and she said, you were to resolve those issues, and she resolved a whole raft of them and the bank moved on. There are still some issues, but she went and resolved most of them. I had great hopes for you, Colin. You came in, your hands were not dirty and you have not been involved in this issue, you'd nothing to defend. I was hoping that you would do a Francesca McDonagh. I was hoping that you would exercise your personal intelligence, which I believe you have, that you exercise your integrity and your competence and that you would see these arguments for the nonsense that they are, but you didn't. You just stood over all of these arguments and you forced these customers to go to the ombudsman and that is deeply, deeply disappointing. I have to say that it is deeply disappointing. What sort of puzzles me is how you thought you were going to get away with it. I really just don't understand that. And I'm trying to point out that when you have a problem, Mr. Pettigrew, I hope when you get stuck into this or if you're not already stuck into it, but you point out to these people that when you have a problem putting your hands up and identifying that problem and accepting that you made a mistake that is the cheapest and best way to deal with it. There are 12,000 tracker customers whose lives have been damaged very badly by this. At last some have been put into arrears, some of them have lost their homes. I'm hoping and I'm trusting now that you will make sure that the 40,000 Ulster Bank tracker customers, which hopefully would be coming on board with AIB, that you're not going to try any of your tracker trickery with those, that they will keep their trackers and that you will not make any efforts to get them off I'm assuming that the competition authority will make sure of that as well. And again, it's an important point when you're trying to do a business and acquire something, your reputation is important and treating customers fairly is very, very important. I have one last pointer to make, and it comes back to the question already asked, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB are out there actively looking for Ulster Bank and KBC customers. Yet at the same time, AIB is putting up barriers. We heard about the guy on the phone, although he wasn't moving anybody trying to open an AIB account is finding it extremely difficult. Many of them are told, for some reason, that they must come in and make an appointment. When is the next appointment, 1 month's time, 2 months' time or 3 months' time. Like what sort of an institution -- I mean, you're thinking short term. You don't need customers, you don't need deposits now. But hopefully, Jim, you will be the Chairman for the next few years, and we'd be in a situation where normal banking will have been restored and you will be looking for customers. You should not be putting up barriers to customers, you should be looking to take demand. But the main thing I want you to do is to change the culture among the board and get them to realize that treating customers fairly should be at the core of what you do, and it's not an empty slogan.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Burgess. Let me just start by responding to some of the points. First of all, thank you for your various points. First of all, look, I can't comment on the past, I'm afraid. I mean I can tell you one thing you raised a point about is customer care at the heart of this organization? And really what you're saying is it more than just was. And all I can tell you since I've been here since the 28th of October, I can look you in the eye and tell you it absolutely is. And I -- my mission and it is all the Board's mission here is absolutely that. And I can tell you categorically at the very point, it is absolutely the pinnacle of that what -- is what we're doing, yes? I cannot promise to you that there won't be -- for instance, we had this instance with it this telephone call or something like phone on a bad day and something like -- I'm afraid that will happen in life. But your central point, your first point, an important point you're making is the customer at the center of everything this corporation is doing now and in the future? And all I can tell you is I will not spend a minute short of all time to try and make sure that, that actually is the case. And I believe from my interactions with the Board over the last 6 months that is the same view of everybody on Board. I'm sorry, I can't -- I know it sounds like a sort of easy answer, I cannot comment, I'm not going to comment on the past, but your point about making sure the customer is at the center of things is a fair point, and I'm seeing from responding to you that it most definitely is my mission as the new chairman of this organization is for that to be the case. And I have to say that my sense from working closely with Colin and his executive team, that is absolutely at the heart of Colin's DNA and his leadership DNA and culture. But you're right, culture is always important in all organizations and it's front of mind. So that would be my first point. On trackers, and maybe, Colin, you want to come in and perhaps Helen may, but just a couple of observations from me would be on trackers. We are absolutely determined to get this finally behind us as these historic legacy must be put by and we are very confident where we put it. That's first point. Second point, and it comes back to you what I was saying earlier, everything we're doing around this is through the customer lives. And my final point, really, as a general point is we're now, I think, 99.5% sort of these matters have been resolved. So I really do think we're going to be able to get this behind us this year. I think picking up your other point Mr. Burgess on inbound, given the changing landscape that we've got within the retail banking industry here in Ireland, I mean, the first point, I'm sure Colin will reinforce it. I mean we want to bring on customers. We want to -- we, of course, want to do that. And we want to do that absolutely appropriately and well for the customers. So there's no intention blockages in picking up actually really on Conor's point from responding to the first question. We've got -- we will be 500 to 1,000 people additional resource. Some will be internal sort of switches, temporary resources to make sure this happens in a sensible time frame so that we can -- so we can onboard these customers. So there's no intention at all of [indiscernible]. In fact, we want to have an enhanced customer experience for all of these people. Can I just -- maybe Colin, I mean, you may wish to respond to Mr. Burgess' points.

Yes. Obviously, this is something that we have discussed at the AGM, I think, in 2020 and 2021. In relation to the tracker issue, once the FSPO decision arrived in relation to 1 customer, we moved expeditiously to apply that decision to the letter and in its spirit to the entirety of that customer group. We are committed to resolving the tracker issue for once and for all. And we are committed to resolving it to the satisfaction of the Central Bank and including on this matter, hopefully, during this calendar year. In relation to new customers, this is -- I've described it as a once-in-a-lifetime change in the banking landscape in this country. And I can assure you, Mr. Burgess and everybody else here that we will do everything to ensure that customers of Ulster Bank or KBC who choose to come to AIB have as friction-free and seamless experience as is possible, and we are investing very, very heavily in people and systems at this moment in time to ensure that, that happens. We regard this as a short-term challenge but a very, very significant medium- and long-term opportunity for the group, and we want to welcome as many of those customers who choose to come to AIB.

Thanks. Do you have a follow-up, then I'll move on to somebody else.

Yes. This is not a legacy issue. You are not trying to resolve it. There's one very small point in that you might look into. The ombudsman's wording in this case was peculiar. And AIB interpreted this as it is okay to pay a refund to calculate the interest on a simple interest basis. Jim, are you a charted accountant?

I certainly am.

Have you worked in banking?

Yes.

Have you ever heard of a bank making a refund and calculating the interest on a simple interest basis? It just doesn't happen, but AIB is the only bank to do it, and they say, we follow the letter of the law and they went back to the ombudsman and every case is separate, and I'm making sure that the ombudsman will rule again on this issue. But this is -- you said the letter and the spirit, you stuck to the letter Colin. You did not look at the spirit. The spirit would be that when a bank overcharges, you refund on a compound interest basis. By the way, it's small money. The average paid refund that people got was about EUR 40,000, this would be about another EUR 2,000 each. It's just extremely annoying that the bank won't put this to bed and actually go and do the right thing and stick to the spirit, not the letter. Nothing else to say.

Helen, do you want to comment?

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Burgess. As you know, we've engaged -- we do on this, we've engaged with the ombudsman we believe we have interpreted the ombudsman's decision appropriately. And the spirit of ombudsman's decision, and we moved at pace as Colin said, to apply a decision with regard to 1 customer to approximately 6,000 customers.

Thanks. Yes, sir. Just giving the microphone to you.

[ Peter Gallaher ] is my name, and I have my hands in all tills -- all things. Two things I will say to you briefly. Thanks for the umbrella, by the way, and all the experts and the service today is probably. That when I was a young pitman, I've had many checks of various banks bounced. And I will speak frankly, you can't afford to bounce any more checks, you can't afford not to have a war chest. You've got to be very much on the board this year because NatWest are building a huge network of cash, and they are making acquisitions. And they have their hands in all your colleagues, all the various banks permanent -- Irishness Permanent which is creeping up there, and there is going to be a takeover bid of something. Whether it will be yourselves or it could be Bank of Ireland or whatever because bear in mind that Bank of Ireland and AIB need each other at the moment, even on a friendship basis. It might not even be an Irish bank could be a British bank who takes you over. But somebody is going to snap, something's got to break and I'm a shareholder of all the banks, and I can see this happening. You've got to have a war chest. Bear in mind, I hate to say it, but you all -- the government [indiscernible] and as the government is still there, and they'll be looking for their money and everything else. But the question is, if the banking is so tied up now, it's unbelievably tied up in every possible way. And -- but it's nice to come down to the various meetings and to receive umbrellas. The last Chairman gave me an umbrella. He was a Leicester Alliance. He was an Englishman, may I say, he was a very nice friend. And I've lost touch with the things, but there's 1 man here today who was the registrar in AIB. He might identify himself, but he's here today because he walked pass me and I saw him that he knew where the AIB building was. And the AIB was so generous, it was unbelievable between tents and umbrellas and T-shirts and caps and God knows what else, anything you want, you just get off AIB. And they had 10 office blocks booked, but it all came tracking down. And the history of banking is you don't believe -- I knew of AIB when it was Munster & Leinster because my family, which was the Galla House of the building [indiscernible] Munster and Leinster. So I hate to say it, but banking has gone into a new era now, and it could be very and takeover bids. And I hope the press is listening to this because I'm telling you from the horse's mouth. I have no shortage of money. I have a big cash bank for take up for buying shares. And my shares were -- because the bank manager [indiscernible] didn't know who I was, branch manager wasn't on the bowl, it got bounced, and I got charged EUR 10 for the privilege of bouncing it simply because I asked for -- I wrote a GBP 20,000 check or they should know who I am by now, of which I've got to have covered. So if you could do with something with those issues, I would be very grateful.

Well, thank you. And...

And I would be very upset to see AIB get taken over, by the way. There'd be no skin on my noise, but personally, it would be great because now that I have a company secretary at board banks, AIB and Bank of Ireland, and I know them both personally, I will be, shall we say, I like to do jobs personally, but it's -- but I have to do my banking through my wife. My wife goes down because I haven't been well for many, many months. And she has to go down a bit the money for me, which I have in my bank -- in my pocket. I'm not short of money, but all I'm saying to you is have those cash reserves ready, so you might have to do counterbid.

Okay. Well, thank you very much...

Because company is watching you. They're all watching. We're a building company and there is [ Karen Homes ]. [ Karen Homes ] were on my doorstep. I'm a big shareholder of [ Karen Homes ]. I'm a big shareholder of [ Karen Homes ]. I'm a big shareholder of [indiscernible] Gallaher Holdings. And I'm one of the Gallaher's and I'm not as sharp or I'm not as unstraight as my brother, Charles, is. I'm very straight, okay. And if I don't like you, I'll soon tell you where to go. Thank you Mr. Chairman.

No. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gallaher for these comments.

[indiscernible]

No. And we must prepare that conversation, and I noticed the finance sector at the end of the table there is jotting down your points. So it's much pretty much things, but you put me personally under a bit of pressure with the former Chairman providing you with a umbrella . So I have to be under pressure to make sure you're get a [ umbrella ] next year. But the serious point is thank you very much. It's very valuable.

[indiscernible]

Yes. Okay. And good luck with -- on the health front as well, Mr. Gallaher, please. Thank you. Now there are a couple of other questions as well. We'll get the mic next to you. I think it was just leading up he was first. I'm trying to just make sure from a Chair point of view, if you don't mind to just do it order, but then it's this gentleman here, and then we'll come to you a second in the front.

My name is [indiscernible ] from Trinity College Dublin, and I'm here representing Trinity Student Managed Fund, Europe's largest students run portfolio with over EUR 350,000 worth of assets under management. Now although today, we are a small group, we are representing our 1,000-plus current members. And as shareholders of AIB, we are looking for a stronger commitment to ESG friendly practices. According to Amundi Ireland nationwide survey in Ireland in late 2021, almost 80% of savers believe that responsible investing is important, but are unaware if their savings are being currently invested in ESG friendly products as well as 86% of those as a pension investment or savings product, place importance on environmental, social and governance issues, but 82% did not know if their existing products are ESG friendly. This displays a clear appetite from the Irish population of savers for a green savings account. However, according to our research at TSMF, no Irish Bank offers such a green savings deposit account, and this has shocked us. We, the members of Trinity Student Managed Fund are looking to AIB as the leader in sustainability today to address this issue. ESG is a systemic issue and cannot be addressed piecemeal if AIB is going to continue paving the way. The provision of a green savings account is a fundamental step in addressing the current demands of Irish savers. This includes particular importance to us as students because the students of today are the long-term banking customers of the future. Therefore, this issue demands considerable attention in the near term. And the type of deposit accounts that we, the students from Trinity College Dublin want, it is not available. Our generation of new entrants to the working world are seeking a green savings deposit account where our funds are used to address the climate and biodiversity crisis as well as fund environmental and socially sustainable investments. We're unhappy with AIB's lack of response to the 4 out of 5 savers who want their funds to be put to good use, but just don't know how. AIB needs to address this with a green savings deposit accounts. I hope that my presence here today sends a strong signal that action needs to be taken, and the students at Trinity College Dublin and we, at Trinity Student Managed Fund will be raising immediate action on the points that I raised today.

Ms. [indiscernible] thank you so much for these. It's really brilliant to get that sort of feedback and really insightful points that you're making from younger generation is fantastic. So thank you. And I'll ask some colleagues to -- to just to come back to you on some of the specifics there. But hopefully, as maybe we've not done enough in this sector this morning, but hopefully, can we just talk generically for a second, and we'll try and answer your specifics because at the heart of everything we're trying to do here is actually around the sustainability agenda. It's not just words, we're actually doing things. And if you picked up from Colin's -- I know this is on the borrowing side, but we'll come to your point in a second, but it's really important because it's at the heart and really, what we believe will be one of the key differentiators of this cooperation going forward, sustainability, ESG at the heart. For instance, 22 -- Colin just reported a minute that 22% of our new lending actually in the first quarter was, in fact, ESG. You mentioned, I think, that a number of other things, for instance, the climate fund, which was I think EUR 10 billion. We've just announced that EUR 10 billion. And so there's over EUR 2 billion, I believe, of funding in green savings. I touched earlier on the introduction of the Board. We, as a cooperation as well sustainability committee headed up by Helen Normoyle, who I introduced earlier, and really important that -- you really should hope -- I presume you have with our sustainability report, yes? So there's really an awful lot that we are doing, yes, on the ESG front. We've got all our commitments, as you know, and you'll have read in the annual report in terms of us getting to 2030 and what we're doing in terms of the lending portfolio in '40 and '50. So -- and actually, within all these buildings, getting ESG compliance. So I hope there is demonstration enough to demonstrate that this is in the heart of the business. And so it's really interesting to hear your question. I don't know the answer specifically about the savings account. Colin don't know if you have a response on that because it sounds like a great idea, to be perfectly honest.

Thank you, Chairman. [indiscernible]. This is at the very core of our mission at AIB. We are, by a margin the most ESG-focused financial institution in this country, and we're the clear leader in that space. On a global basis, we rank [indiscernible] Sustainalytics, which has looked at over 1,000 banks. We ranked just outside the top 5% globally. But we're going to do more. We're going to rank even higher on a global basis. We have the clear as I said, we are clearly the domestic leader in this space, and we are intent on being a leader in the European context over the course of the next number of years. We've set out very clear ambitions in relation to our own operations in terms of our net zero in all operations by 2030, we're making huge progress on that agenda. We've set out a new supplier code to which we hold our third-party suppliers accountable in relation to their commitment to sustainability. And we've made a commitment that 70% of all our new lending will be green or transitional lending by 2030. We have focused our product efforts to date on mortgages. And you would have seen throughout '21 and indeed in the opening months of this year, we've continued to reduce our interest rates on our green mortgages to encourage our customers and to encourage our borrowers -- our mortgage borrowers to make good decisions about the homes that they are buying. And I will, of course, be speaking with the products team and your point is very well made and we will have a look at what we can do as we continue to make greener our product suite over the next several years.

[indiscernible] you want to follow up on that.

There's no doubt that AIB is leading the way, and that's why we are here today speaking to you about this issue. And the difference is that we're students and students are savers, and we want to be involved in the sustainability. And nobody can get a mortgage without a savings account to save for that deposit. And the mortgage is being less and less likely for our generation, a renting generation, and we want this savings account -- sorry, to be able to afford that and get involved in AIB sustainability?

Leave that with us, so and that's the message. And the chief executives on the case. I think we've made it very articulate a very good point. And actually also, I hope I'm not dropping unit. Can we not just do something, can we not just engage with them? I'm very happy to engage with the students, I think, hear your voice and react to it. So why don't we try and arrange something where we can get together with you and we can explore these things further. And thank you so much for your question. It's really at the heart. Now hopefully, it's demonstrated -- hopefully, we're not just answering in a robotic way here, and I hope you detected this is from the heart of the chief exec and it's certainly my heart if you'd ask me a different question, why did I join this institution? One of the big reasons was the passion that we hold for sustainability. And so it's particularly good to have this conversation with you and the younger generation. It's great. Thank you very much. Right, we've got other questions. I promise you -- I promised this gentleman first and then [indiscernible]I will not forget you.

No, my name is [ Noel Savage ]. I'm 60 years and a customer of AIB, 21 years retired. I have to say that I can't agree that the service is getting better. It's getting worse. I'm [indiscernible] inherited 3 other branches. And every day you go into the bank and use the ATM inside rather than the one outside, there's a problem. For example, an old widow went up to go ahead of me, she looked for her money, out comes her card, out comes her receipt, what was missing was the money. So an investigation takes place, and this has happened. There's no money in it. Then the other thing that so many times, [indiscernible] I want a printed receipt. But I just want to turn to few other things that happened to me. On one occasion, I had [indiscernible] card of never having failed to me amount of money whatever it was, whenever I was doing all of my life. But I was in the bank, and I suddenly realized my bank cards are coming through. And that's not enough, but I realize in my current account is very small. So I said I better resolve this. So I asked the person [indiscernible] I again went to [indiscernible] I was talking about GBP 3,000. Immediately in case this money come in, not because I hadn't got it. Eventually, I'm introduced to my relationship manager. I had to tell them I already have one, I just called Ann-Marie Savage, my wife. But then again, he starts asking me, what have you got? What are you doing? And when it gets to about 7 figures of liquid assets, he said, "God, you've got a lot of money," I won't tell you what I said back. But I said, "no, I only need this for 48 hours," right? Because I have money coming in, in case of [indiscernible] for the first time [indiscernible]. He then says, "I have to apply to head office." 24 hours afterwards he comes back and said, "I've organized you for a month," I asked for 2 days, and he charges me EUR 27 for the service. But I'll go on to another one where the bank was -- had a lot of cash flow, and you are looking for people who were reasonably liquid to take loans. I was offered a loan of anything like 5%. And at first, they said, no, but anyways, I took EUR 100,000, had a lot of assets that could cover this. And I also gave -- I gave a collateral of 150% of the loan. About 4, 5 months afterwards, 1 big person who organized who says, "Oh, you want it inside 1 set up, I won't [indiscernible]. But, I've since found out he's known as Mr. [indiscernible], he's the guy that shows them all how they get the money. So when I go in, he said, "Listen, I'm very busy [indiscernible] me for?" about this loan, you got And he says, "We have to regulate it." I said, "I signed a legally binding document. I gave you 150% collateral. What are you talking about?" Or I want you to go on to [indiscernible]. Well, I used a few words on him. And I said, "If you want your money back, give me 3 days, I personally bring it in cash and I tell you what I put. And as I'm walking out, I said -- one other name I wanted to mention, and I mentioned the [indiscernible] roars at me, "we've got our money from the [indiscernible]." I said, "excuse me you're not talking -- So I can't use the work as slated here." And he said, -- "I said, my clear understanding I racked around more with huge amount of money. He was servicing a [indiscernible] itself. And what happened anyway [indiscernible]. He got into trouble with the number of banks he was dealing with. And you agree and we have to negotiate with the write-off, I think it's EUR 250 million [indiscernible] -- what I want to really get on to is, I give examples of what happened to me.

Okay. You have. Yes.

Last week, the machine didn't work. That's the second. Oh, by the way, I walked down getting [indiscernible] when suddenly from the desk, I get this [indiscernible] what are you doing there? And I looked around who's he talking to? He's talking to me. I said, I'm standing here, that's what I'm doing". "You jumped the queue," he said. And I am at the end of the queue." You should have seen we've been under a queue going around the bank and all around there. And I said I won't say what he said, but anyway, that happened. And -- but what I really...

Have you got -- have you got any particular question?

I'm just conscious, so other shareholders wanted to speak and...

They're not really in there. Thank you very much. No, no, we don't want to push off -- now I get answered.

No, no. You're not the ones to push off. No, get on with it.

No, no, no. Mr. [ Savage ], we do want to -- we're very interested in that. And if there's anything [indiscernible] or certainly customer [indiscernible].

[indiscernible]

Right. [indiscernible]

I like a lot of people were persuaded to invest in the [indiscernible]. Again, 2 weeks beforehand, I gave the list of my assets. And it comes to me immediately, we're going into property, blah, blah, blah, and I invest EUR 150,000, and EUR 3,000 cover your costs, not my cost. Over the next few years, it goes up to EUR 150,000, EUR 225,000, right? And then a lot of people were pushed to buy shares. I was on the team that we're pursuing at the time. And what happened I said to him, "How are you facing" and to my total horror, he said, "I have a big farm down [indiscernible]. They persuaded me to take EUR 0.5 million loan, but not only that, just you won't believe, they persuaded me to take GBP 1 million to buy shares in the bank, which are beginning to slip, right? And like I said, "We cannot do that." Then you should have known that these shares are going always down. But with regard to -- we got this letter saying, after the people who top quotas and I was the member then but I didn't think it was going to subside [indiscernible]. I didn't get in. But we've got these letters, as you are aware, as you were an investor is investing investment fund, we wrote to you previously to provide that AIB has established a program of -- to review all the investments in Belfry funds on a case-by-case basis to regenerate redress maybe to in certain circumstances. Your view and assessment of your Belfry investments is expected to conclude that this is February in April. This is after 2 years. And the outcomes to it but not any addresses who is expected to be communicated at that time. If you need any context, but I can tell you will get quickly and get an answer on that phone. And the only time I got through the guy said, I don't know, I'm just taking the call. I take your name but I never got any one to come back to me. But anyway, then we get another letter. Now this is the way we're going to get. We're going to get the decision made. But we wrote on 24 of February, we said we expect it to communicate the outcome of the review of your Belfry investment, including whether or not there would be any redress in April 2022. The review has taken longer than we expected. And that they're doing it for 2 years. And every 3 months we get the same -- same statement, nothing else. We're now -- and we anticipate that we now expect to communicate the outcome no later than September '22, that's 6 months away. We are sorry for this delay, but we are grateful for your patience. We've applied an independent firm to assess aspects of our review, including the way in which we have assessed investment on how we would provide any redress. Now what they're saying is there's nobody in the bank sort of done it, but what the [indiscernible] we're also -- no, sorry, if you need to contact us, contact us. Now I have a bad line and I'm going to take, why do I believe this is pushed off? Last week, we announced, as Mr. Burgess said that the bank was caught taken on outside mortgages, uncharging different rates even though is against the law. And the Central Bank announced hit this with EUR 70 million fine. I just don't know what to think about that?

Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. [ Savage ] Yes. No, thank [indiscernible] I mean I'm not sure you have a question in that sense. But please, yes, say we do take customer -- we do take customer as we talked before in the center of the thing we're doing. So please don't assume, but I'm suggesting go the care that genuinely, if you -- if there's any specifics in regard to you so that please do. Okay. Okay. Right, we're going to Helen, is there anything -- Colin, do you want to

The provision that the Group has made. We haven't yet concluded the enforcement phase on tracker mortgage examination. The provision that we have made in anticipation of a filing from the central bank. The provision was taken -- when did we take that provision? In December last year. End of last year, we took -- sorry?

[indiscernible]

It was disclosed when we took the provisions publicly.

Okay. We're going to move on. Sorry, the mic is coming to you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Actually, I had a question in relationship to the...

Could you state your name, please...

My name is [ Brendan Ryan ]. I'm just a small shareholder, very small shareholder. I just have a question in relation to the Belfry investment. In fact, I was going to ask a question about it. But I wanted to just ask a more general question about the Belfry scheme. The as I recall, last July, the high court and the commercial court settlement was reached in respect of about 270 cases and the Chairman -- sorry, Mr. Hunt, Chief CTO, said in August that the bank would be proactive in obviously implementing the settlement and in also in dealing with people who were not included in the original 270. This way the large number of is 270. The case was, in fact, a kind of a test case on respect, which was finally settled. Now I just want to ask 2 questions in relation to this. First of all, in relation to the 270 people whose cases were settled. And Mr. Hunt indicated in August that provision of the order of EUR 100 million was being set aside, EUR 100 million, to include compensation to the investors and also to include legal costs. I was just wondering how much about EUR 100 million has been actually paid out? And in particular, roughly what proportion of these cases have been settled out -- has progress been -- how much progress has been made in resolving that 270? Now in addition to those 270, there were about 40 other people who had taken legal proceedings. As my friend over here said that some people dropped out at an early stage, other people persisted. There was 1 specific case I have in mind, not me, but I know of at least 1 specific case where the person wrote to the solicitors for AIB after the settlement in July. They wrote again in September. They were referred to the legal department of AIB here in this building at this address. They wrote in September to the legal department. They are still waiting for a reply to that letter in spite of a number of follow-up letters. No reply to the followup letters. That's just 1 case. But what -- the general question, how are you getting on in such the 270 cases? And secondly, what about the other 40 or thereabouts who are still should -- what are they -- what are these people to do? Are they to institute new proceedings and start the whole thing again because they paused but the cases are still there. They're still on the books in the High Court. They were only paused pending the test case as it were. Now should they start up proceedings again?

Okay. thanks for these 2 questions, Mr. [ Ryan ]. We'll deal with the general one. Anything on a specific case basis, you'll fully understand we wouldn't want to be discussing in this forum. But I'll ask actually Helen to address this.

Thank you, Mr. [ Ryan ] . So the -- and Mr. Savage have the correspondence from us. We are -- the review is underway. It goes back to investors who invested, as you know, from 2002 to 2006. So unfortunately, given the passage of time, it takes us a number of -- it has taken us longer than anticipated to collect the files. We are engaging with various stakeholders. We're working within a regulatory framework to come up with a redress program, which we'll consider on a case-by-case basis, as outlined, each investor circumstances, and there are approximately 2,500 investors. That includes the investors who were part of the litigation. That includes the 40 or so investors you mentioned who had litigation, which has been paused. So all 2,500 investors will be considered as part of our redress program. We do apologize it is taking longer than anticipated, but it is a program that's underway. And we do hope to communicate a game with investors ahead of September, but there are a number of stakeholders that we engage with. And finally, Mr. [ Ryan ] with regard to a letter that came into the area of the legal team, which is my team, I apologize, if that hasn't been responded to, and I'm very happy to talk to you at the end of the meeting.

Thanks, Helen, and thank you, Mr. [ Ryan ]. Or you have a follow-up?

Very briefly. Can you indicate any kind of time line for dealing with these cases, it's urgent matter. Many -- some of these people are quite old, and they need a settlement. It's not just in a couple of years' time, they need...

Yes. Well, we hope before the end of September of this year.

Later this year...

Yes, before September of this year.

I mean can they even expect engagement?

Well, we are writing to our investor regularly.

Yes. Because -- this has been a problem, even engagement, nevermind.

I appreciate Mr. Savage this is frustrating.

[indiscernible]

Thank you.

And this is a legacy issue, if you like, but it's still, unfortunately, in spite of Mr. Hunt's good intentions last August to be proactive in settling it and resolving and moving on. I mean, the bank needs to move on from this issue, get it settled. But unfortunately, the implementation is certainly lacking.

Okay. Thank you. Any final questions from the floor? No. Thank you. So we can move to the next. The third and final segment on questions is just if there's anybody on the phone lines been listening in today. I think I'm getting a signal there is nobody on that, just double check in the back there. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you for that discussion, debate and question session. Thank you very much. And now the polls, we're on to the polls now. We will now proceed to hold the polls of the resolutions, as I promised, and as we propose today. Votes may be given by registered holders of ordinary shares present here in person or by proxy and of course, we're entitled to vote. Every such holder has 1 vote for every ordinary share held. I will vote on any of these shareholders who've submitted a valid proxy and appointing himself as Chairman to vote on their behalf. I should mention that shareholders or those shareholders who have already lodged a proxy, obviously, there is no need to complete a poll card, unless, of course, you're changing your voting intentions. The poll card is on the reverse of the proxy form. I will now ask shareholders present who wish to complete polling cards to complete, sign and deposit them in the ballot box in the room. Where is that product? And it's at the back of the room. Should anyone have any questions on the poll procedure. Please ask Mr. [indiscernible] or representative from our registers. The polls will close just after -- immediately after the meeting closes and the votes cast will, of course, be verified under the scrutiny of Computershare registrars. As normal, the results of the poll of these resolutions proposed will be announced publicly later today by the company on the RNS, Regulatory News Service, will be available, of course, on our AIB website. So ladies and gentlemen, that really concludes the proceedings for today. It only remains for me to thank you. It's good -- as I said, at the top of the meeting, it's good to be back physically rather than on video. So -- and I thank you for coming today, and thank you for the questions. And I also thank you for your support for the AIB organization. We don't take that lightly. We appreciate -- we appreciate every single shareholder. So -- and can I just end by wishing you and all your families continued good health in the future, and we look forward to seeing you, of course, in a year's time at the 2023 AGM.

Computershare Michelle Cantwell and James Mahony are there with the poll boxes. So they can come to you. If you have a poll card that you'd like...

The poll boxes are coming around now as we speak. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you, Chairman.