Bank of Ireland admits error in transferring over KBC mortgages

The mistake affects roughly half of the total customers transferred over from KBC

The error could see 35,000 customers' ability to get loans impacted. Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos

An error by Bank of Ireland in the transfer of KBC mortgages could impact thousands of customers' ability to get loans over the coming weeks as it works to resolve the issue.

In advance of the Belgium-based KBC’s departure from the Irish market, approximately 70,000 mortgages were transferred to Bank of Ireland of which 35,000 are expected to be impacted by the error.

The bank said the issue came as a result of the mortgage “start date” being incorrectly inputted into their systems. This meant that Bank of Ireland did not submit the mortgage details of the impacted customers to the Central Credit Register (CCR) for the months of February and March.

The resulting gaps in payments could impact the credit histories of those customers and their ability to borrow money from other lenders.

The bank told customers that it will continue to withhold the monthly CCR reporting until the matter is resolved.

The CCR, which is operated by the Central Bank of Ireland, stores the personal and credit information on loans of €500 or more. All financial institutions offering loans have to supply payment information to the CCR every month.

The CCR provides credit reports to both borrowers and lenders. Under the terms of the CCR, lenders have to seek a person’s credit report if they are applying for a loan of €2,000 or more.

In a statement, Bank of Ireland said it does not believe that the error “is likely to have affected” customers but if someone impacted by this process was to apply for a loan “the gap in the monthly updates” to the CCR could be seen by the prospective lender.

The company said the information was not submitted during the last two months to prevent “incorrect credit information” being reflected in customers’ credit reports.

Bank of Ireland has sent a letter to impacted customers setting out the issue and advising them that they do not need to take any further action.

The company said that if any customer has difficulty in getting a loan as a result of this error, the letter can be provided as proof.

“To date we’ve had no confirmation of a loan application being impacted but if any customer has a specific query they can contact our team and we will support,’ the bank said.

“We have also informed other lenders about the error so that they are aware of it.

“We are updating the records as a priority and will write to customers again when it is resolved, which is expected in the next few weeks.” Bank of Ireland said it will write to customers again once the issue has been resolved.

In February, Bank of Ireland completed the acquisition of KBC assets including a loan portfolio of €7.8bn and €1.8bn in deposits. The vast majority of that loan portfolio, €7.6bn, were mortgages.

Last year, Bank of Ireland was fined €463,000 after the Data Protection Commissioner found thousands of customers’ data was accidentally altered in such a way it could have damaged their credit ratings and prevented them getting loans.