FBD’s annual return for 2025 showed profit before tax of €54.1, a drop of €22.9m from the previous year. Claims relating to storm Éowyn in January 2025 amounted to a net cost for the insurer of €30.8m.

FBD said it will maintain its dividend of €1 per ordinary share, the fifth year in a row the company’s final dividend will be at that level. The insurer will also repurchase €4m of its own shares. FDB said its capital reserves remain comfortably above its own targets.

Gross written premiums passed €500m, with 9% growth driven by a 3.2% rise in the number of polices and a 5.6% rise in the average premium. The increase in the average farm premium was 9.7% which FBD said was largely due to indexation applied to property sums insured, as rebuilding costs continue to rise.

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Returns on FBD’s €1.17bn investment portfolio dropped slightly to €24.6m. This was mostly driven by the lower interest-rate environment in 2025 as the European Central Bank cut interest rates four times during the year. Corporate and government bonds account for more than three-quarters of FBD’s investment portfolio.

Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal, Tomás Ó Miheach said: “The growth for last year was very strong, with growth of 9% – in insurance terms, very significant.” He added that two-thirds of the gross written premium growth was in farm insurance.

On Éowyn, he said that the storm was a major test of the company’s campaign to get farmers to ensure their premiums fully cover the value of their property. “We filled 9,000 claims and underinsurance was essentially not a feature. This shows that we had closed the underinsurance gap that arises in period of high inflation.”

On the dividend, Ó Midheach confirmed that the company’s sustainable dividend target is €1 per share and that is what FBD seeks to maintain. “We then look to the special dividend to redistribute capital,” he added. In 2025 FBD paid a special dividend of €0.75 cents per share.

The annual accounts for FBD show a dividend write back of €1.9m, which is for dividends which were awarded by FBD, but had never been claimed. Kate Tobin, chief financial officer at FBD said the write back arose from dividends which had remained unclaimed for more than 12 years. “This is the first time we did this so we are talking about unclaimed dividends going from 12 years ago back to the listed of the company. If we were to do it again this year, it would not be as large a feature as it was [for 2025].”

Ó Midheach added that “strenuous efforts are made” to find the shareholders to enable the payment of the dividends. He said the company “would engage” with any shareholders who discovered they had unclaimed dividends.

On the share price, which has gained 20% over the last year, Ó Midheach said: “We do think the story is getting through. We are a return company, and a value-driven company.”

FBD shares were little changed at €16.50 in the wake of the earnings announcement.