‘Men wept and shook with fear talking about ex-RSA Insurance boss’

Executives at RSA Insurance’s Irish unit wept as they recalled how their former boss, Philip Smith, pressured them, an employment hearing heard.

“Men were weeping into their hands, crying,” Derek Walsh, RSA’s group counsel, said at an Employment Tribunal yesterday in Dublin, in relation to an internal probe into how the company handled the process of setting aside money for large claims.

“Men shaking with fear when they were talking, not about the reserving issue, not about the issue that was going to get them into trouble. But talking about why they had to do it,” he said. They were “talking about Mr Smith.”