Tracker mortgage scandal: At last, Central Bank gets tough

Complaining about the banks is a bit like giving out about the weather — more often than not, it leaves the complainant feeling depressed, frustrated, powerless and convinced that it was a pointless exercise.

Complaining about the banks is a bit like giving out about the weather — more often than not, it leaves the complainant feeling depressed, frustrated, powerless and convinced that it was a pointless exercise.

As far as Irish banks are concerned, there is still much to complain about. An additional 13,600 customers affected by the tracker mortgage scandal have now been identified by the Central Bank, bringing the total number of impacted accounts to 33,700.

That is shocking but hardly surprising, given the reluctance of the banks to engage not only with its customers but with the Central Bank itself. It has spent the past two years trying to extract from the banks the full number of customers they cheated by taking them off their tracker mortgage rates.

The Central Bank has been criticised for not doing enough to bring those financial institutions to heel, most recently by the European Central Bank, but it finally appears to be exercising some muscle and more prepared to bring the banks back into line.

Announcing the results of its latest examination into how lenders denied borrowers tracker rates, Central Bank governor, Philip Lane, said: “Many lenders publicly state that they put customers first. The evidence of the examination that we have seen suggests otherwise.”

Why are we not surprised?