Fast-and-loose finance industry: Sector plays on our tragic deference

The Central Bank’s (CB) deputy governor Ed Sibley yesterday called for bank executives and directors to be held to account for overcharging at least 20,000 mortgage customers over recent years. 

Speaking in Dublin, Mr Sibley said the bank is doing the groundwork so it might open an enforcement investigation into the State-owned AIB as part of an industry-wide examination of the tracker mortgages. That statement, on the face of it and by Irish standards of accountability, seems plausible and as much as might be expected. However, what it really shows is how detached from Seán Citizen’s world our financial watchdogs remain. Remember, Mr Sibley said he expects “all the main banks to be subject to CB enforcement investigations”. In a world where financial regulators — and their political masters — took the job of protecting citizens as seriously as they should those investigations would have ended years ago. Effective sanctions would have been imposed and maybe, just maybe, the toxic culture unearthed at our banks might be on the wane.

The reality is that over the last decade those caught up in the 27,500 cases of tracker extortion were as likely to get help from the Lifton Sea Scouts had that group kayaked from West Devon to try to resolve the issue as they did from consumer protection laws. Until very recently they were left high-and-dry no matter how dire their circumstances were made by the banks. That the 27,500 figure, offered just this week and one that may not be final, is just the latest in a continuum of exploitation shows how very loose, how very haphazard Central Bank supervision and banking ethics must have been.