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Europe - Customers, employees and looking ahead
Customers and employees
Like the rest of the Group, we remain committed to providing a world class level of customer service. With a focus on speed and quality of service, we continued to receive favourable feedback from our customers in 2007.We keep our standards high by continuously developing and training our people. We also gather regular feedback from employees about their thoughts on their working life and actions from this have had a positive impact on morale and retention. Based on the results of the most recent Gallup survey our 2007 annual staff engagement scores have increased in Ireland to 3.90 out of 5 (2006: 3.36) and decreased in Germany to 3.66 (2006: 3.81).
Looking ahead
Markets look set to remain volatile throughout 2008. We expect the short-term growth rate across our European operations to slow from the levels seen in 2007 but anticipate that sales will be ahead of 2007.In the German life and pensions market, 2008 will be a year of uncertainty with the change in insurance contract law and the unpredictable impact of the increased transparency introduced with this change. However, we are well positioned to build on our strength in distribution and it is anticipated that the results of the new unit linked product, Maxxellence will continue to be positive in 2008.
Ireland was the second worst performing stock market in the world in 2007 and with the continued uncertainty in the property market, we have revised downwards our expected market growth in 2008. However, the demographics of the Irish life and pensions market are strong and medium term prospects are encouraging. With our market leading products and customer service proposition, we expect to continue to gain market share and grow the business.
