BoI ‘cannot rule out’ hike in mortgage interest rates

Even more mortgage interest rate hikes have not been ruled out by Bank of Ireland; with its CEO, Richie Boucher, saying funding costs “will be a key driver” of future decisions.

Mr Boucher told yesterday’s sitting of the Joint Oireachtas finance committee that the bank — which last month upped its standard variable mortgage rate by 0.5% to 4.3% — has “no current plans” to raise its rates any further, but “cannot rule it out for the future”. “The cost of money will be a key driver,” he said.

Mortgage demand had been muted during the first half of this year, but had picked up since June, he said, with Bank of Ireland attracting 40% of the new business flow. He said the bank has 16,000 mortgage customers with restructured loans and over 80% of them are meeting revised arrangements.

Mr Boucher said that 97% of its €3.5bn lending to SMEs this year, is comprised of new or increased lending.

However, he came in for criticism on a number of topics — one being his remuneration, which topped €830,000 last year — and another being the general slowness in Bank of Ireland’s progress on mortgage-to-rent cases.

On the former, Mr Boucher repeatedly said the remuneration issue “is put to our shareholders on an annual basis”.

On the mortgage-to- rent issue — which aims to restructure unsustainable mortgages by allowing homeowners to remain in their house, by paying rent, while ownership switches to an approved housing body — he said Bank of Ireland only has 13 cases being processed, presently, but is anxious to move the programme forward more quickly.

Mr Boucher denied he was blaming the Central Bank for the slow progress in making the mortgage-to-rent scheme work.

However, Fianna Fáil senator Thomas Byrne, reacted by describing Bank of Ireland’s response to the mortgage crisis as “pitiful”, adding the low level of mortgage-to-rent engagement proves “the banks are not taking a proactive approach to the crisis”.

“With Bank of Ireland, which accounts for a large chunk of outstanding Irish mortgages, only dealing with just over a dozen families, it is clear that the mortgage-to-rent scheme offers little or no hope for families and must be reviewed as a matter of urgency,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Boucher said the bank is “prepared and ready” to exit the ELG bank guarantee scheme, which is due to expire at the end of the year.

He noted that the bank should return to profitability by 2014 and is on track to achieve its goal of being “the pre-eminent bank in Ireland”.