FBD Holdings has appointed Fiona Muldoon, a former senior executive at the Central Bank, as its new group chief executive with immediate effect.

Ms Muldoon first joined the insurance group as finance director in January this year. In July, she was appointed chief executive on an interim basis after Andrew Langford stepped down from the role.

She was previously director of credit institutions and insurance supervision at the Central Bank from August 2011 to May 2014.

FBD chairman Michael Berkery said Ms Muldoon had "already made a very significant impact in FBD" since joining the group and had played a pivotal role in the company's capital raising exercise last month.

“She takes the helm at a very important time for FBD as we focus on returning our business to profitability,” Mr Berkery said.

In August, when FBD announced a pretax loss of €96 million for the first half of 2015, Ms Muldoon described the announcement of the losses as a “difficult day for FBD, its shareholders and its staff”.

Dysfunctional market

The company blamed increased claims costs and what it called an “increasingly congested and dysfunctional” insurance market.

FBD said Ms Muldoon (47) would also become chief executive of FBD Insurance subject to the necessary regulatory approval.

A chartered accountant, she spent 17 years of her career with insurer XL Group in Dublin, London and Bermuda, where she worked in senior financial and general management positions. She also serves as a non-executive director of Bank of Ireland.

She joins Glanbia group managing director Siobhan Talbot, CPL chief executive and co-founder Anne Heraty and Conroy Gold and Natural Resources managing director Maureen Jones in a select group of women to lead public companies listed on the Irish Stock Exchange.