First fine of €4.5m for overcharging tracker mortgage customers

The Central Bank has fined Springboard Mortgages — a unit of Permanent TSB Group — €4.5m for overcharging customers for their tracker mortgages.

The sanction involves 220 mortgage accounts and has been imposed for breaches under the Central Bank’s Consumer Protection Codes.

The move is the first such sanction imposed on any lender following the start of the Central Bank probe into tracker rates and is something of a declaration of intent by the regulator because the fine is relatively large in terms of the number of accounts involved.