The chief executive of global insurance brand, Zurich Insurance Plc, has lauded the financial opportunity offered to the company in Ireland.
Markus Hongler was speaking just as the company completed the transfer of its European insurance operations, Zip, to the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin.
He said the nation's loss of the 'Celtic Tiger' reputation was no bad thing, and that nothing that has happened since 2005 – when they first chose Ireland as their new base – has made them rethink their decision. He pointed out that every nation thinks its own financial state is more parlous than any other nation's.
"If you go to Germany, they speak about the Landesbank disaster; in the UK, it is Bank of Scotland and in Switzerland it is UBS – every population usually puts its own country on top of the list," he said.
"However, what is very positively recognised is how fast Ireland’s government has taken decisions, that they didn’t only speak about it, they have really cut the public deficit."
Zip, now Irish-registered, manages most of the Zurich group’s general insurance business across the EU, including in Ireland, Britain, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain and Portugal.
Zurich employs 1,100 people in Ireland, with Zip specifically having 60 highly-specialised staff working in Dublin.
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