ON THE RECORD: Ronan Foley, chief executive of Ecclesiastical Insurance:BECOMING A leading corporate donor sounds like an honourable aspiration, but for Ecclesiastical Insurance, it's a key corporate target. The British-based group's ultimate parent is All Churches Trust, which channels all dividends paid by its insurance subsidiary back to good causes.

Ronan Foley, chief executive of its Irish operation, says the business handed over £8.5 million (€10.02 million) to the trust in 2009, and a total of £80 million since 1972, making it one of the top 10 corporate donors in Ireland and Britain that year. “Most of those ahead of us were banks,” he says. The group wants to overtake most of them to take its place among the top three donors. To do that, he says that it needs to produce a dividend of £17.5 million a year by 2015.

The company’s name gives at least part of the game away. Ecclesiastical was established in the 1880s to provide insurance to Church of England churchmen. While their profession might have been low risk, many of them and their church had property and other assets that needed insurance.

The business grew through the 20th century, and was taken over by the trust in 1972. By 2009, it had gross written premium of £472 million and assets of £1.5 billion.

Ecclesiastical set up shop here in 1980, primarily to cater for the Church of Ireland. “That’s all it did for a number of years, apart from small commercial business,” Foley says.

These days it does a lot more. One of the areas on which it focuses is protected buildings used for commercial purposes.

Foley estimates that the business is worth about €50 million in premium income in total. Although Ecclesiastical does not have all of this, it is looking to increase its share of the business and the company is targeting the market in a planned expansion.

Clients include Dromoland Castle, the hotel in Newmarket-on-Fergus in Clare; Fota House in Cork; and Glin Castle in Limerick. The same basic rules apply for these properties as for any other that does business with the public.

The risks are assessed – with the help of the group’s actuaries in Gloucester – and they are charged accordingly. There are issues peculiar to these structures that need particular expertise. For example, Foley explains that if part of the structure is damaged, it has to be restored using the same sort of materials and approach as would have been used originally.

The Irish business was not always this glamourous, but it was reasonably successful for a sustained period. “It grew to about €9 million, and from 2004 to 2006, it dropped away a bit,” Foley says.

At that stage, the parent looked at Ireland and decided it had the potential to develop, given the right leadership. It recruited Foley from Chubb Insurance Europe, where he was vice president and southern manager in the UK , in 2007. The business was old-fashioned – staff clocked in every day. It was profitable, but not growing, and was losing customers at that point.

“They agreed that they would spend €1.6 million and develop the business in five key niche areas: faith, education, heritage buildings, care, and not-for-profit: charities in other words,” he says.

Foley estimates that those markets add up to €263 million worth of business, so there was plenty of headroom for growth. “My main aim was to double the size of the business in three years.” It grew from €5.5 million to €11 million between 2007 and 2009 and it generated €3.7 million in profits over that period.

It was a good return for €1.6 million, and the group now wants him to take it another step forward with a €2 million investment that will create 20 jobs, almost doubling the existing 25.

Foley says that the organisation needed a cultural change when he took over. One of the first things he did was move it to a modern headquarters on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay on the south side of the Liffey in Dublin.

He also promoted from within, based on what he thought was people’s capacity for leadership rather than management. He spoke individually to employees about their concerns, and identified potential managers from that process.

He merged the businesses in the Republic with the North – which had been part of the UK division – on the grounds that it made more sense. He argued that there was more to work with on an all-Ireland basis, as brokers and other insurers were doing so.

At the same time, it was easier for Belfast to communicate with Dublin, travelling meant a spin down a motorway rather than going to the trouble of getting on a plane. “That’s proven really, really successful and we’ve developed some really significant new business,” he observes.

Foley also worked to attract people from other insurance firms and recruited a new group of brokers that would not have acted for the firm before. “Now it’s time to look at it again, so I went back to the main board before Christmas last year, having done significant research on the five sectors,” he says.

This showed that the markets for the five areas, in terms of premium levels, were worth a total of €263 million. Ecclesiastical will have a €14 million slice of this by the end of this year. “At the moment we have 5 per cent of that and what we want to get to is 18 per cent of the lot,” he says.

Charities are the biggest market, there are about 44,000 not-for-profit organisations in Ireland, including everything from community halls through to the large, high-profile organisations with which most of us are familiar.

It’s a big market, but it’s also very fragmented. Thanks to a broker placement, Ecclesiastical is the main insurer for The Wheel, which is the representative body for non-profits. This means that member organisations can avail of special rates through the broker, BHP in this case.

It also has a partnership with Nursing Homes Ireland, the representative body for private nursing homes in the Republic, whose members look after 19,000 residents.

This is a growth area for Ecclesiastical, but it’s also been the source of some controversy. At least one current affairs documentary showed that some operators are more focused on profit than on care.

“It’s been a really good business for us,” Foley says, which presumably means that the company is not paying out massive amounts on foot of policies. The homes are inspected before the company insures them, and he can’t think of any incidence where it refused coverage outright, or even had grave misgivings.

It does, through its brokers, give advice and guidance about risk to the operators. He’s quick to say that most people who run nursing homes are “passionate and enthusiastic” about what they do.

Given its religious roots, it’s no surprise that it targets this market as well, but these days it is open to all creeds, rather than just the Church of Ireland. The Catholic Diocese of Derry is a client, and it does business with the Islamic community, and a range of other beliefs.

Thanks to things like child abuse scandals, religion, and more particularly Catholicism, has also been the focus of controversy, to say the least. Ecclesiastical has not been affected by any of this but, from an insurer’s point of view, does it mean that the company has to be alive to such risks?

“It’s not foremost in our minds, we look at the overall risk,” he says. “We’ve a lot of time and a lot of experience over the years. We’ve been insuring since 1887 and we know this business better than most.

“That’s the business we’re in, and all the risks that come with that are taken into account when we decide to write it or price it.”

On the Record

Name: Ronan Foley

Position: Chief executive, Ecclesiastical Insurance Ireland, which insures the likes of Dromoland Castle and Fota House.

Why is he in the news?The company is announcing a €2 million expansion in Ireland, and is taking on some new insurance contracts for heritage buildings.

Family:Married to Annette with two daughters, Mia and Sian.

Interests:Photography, golf, gadgets, rugby, politics and music – he never goes anywhere without his iPod.

Something that won't surprise:He spends a lot of spare time reading and learning about new leadership and management techniques.

Something that might surprise:He has just begun writing his first book on his leadership experiences and insights.