Central Bank to reveal homes lost in tracker scandal

The Central Bank will likely verify how many people lost their homes as a result of the tracker mortgage when it issues its final report, as it emerged that the number of affected customers has now reached almost 10,000.

Four of the biggest banks have set aside more than €500m in reserve between them to deal with redress and other compensation over the scandal, believed to be upwards of 15,000 cases when the review is complete.

Banks have admitted people lost their homes because of the scandal, which occurred when customers were wrongly moved off tracker mortgages onto more expensive loans.

The Central Bank yesterday revised its December figures of 8,200 customers, raising it to 9,900 as of February’s end.

To the end of February, about €78m has been paid in redress and other compensation to about 2,600 impacted customers identified as part of the examination. The €78m does not include €5.8m paid to more than 200 customers of lender Springboard, which was fined because of wrongdoing over seven years.

Then owned by PSTB, Springboard was fined €4.5m, the heaviest penalty ever imposed by the Central Bank. PTSB has long sold on Springboard mortgages.

Two million mortgages were originally ordered to be reviewed as part of a probe of 15 lenders that were written to as part of the examination.

Of those 15 lenders, six are still in the process of their own review and will report to the Central Bank by September at the latest.

AIB has €190m, Bank of Ireland €25m, Permanent TSB €140m and Ulster Bank €211m set aside for redress and other costs associated with their review.

Although it has been stressed that each bank may not need to use all of the funds set aside, it gives an indication of how deep the issue is expected to go nationally when the Central Bank review is finally complete in 2018.