Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 4 September 2013
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform
Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank
2:05 pm
Mr. Jim Brown:
It is worth highlighting that, as I said earlier, we are not seeking to repossess homes. That is not our intention. We want to keep people in their homes. We have initiated legal action in cases where customers have not engaged with us, despite our writing to them, calling them, etc., on numerous occasions. These are generally cases that are nine to 12 months in arrears. What we believe will happen is that through initiating the legal action, there will be a percentage of customers who will re-engage with us. That is already happening and 20% have re-engaged with us. We expect that figure to rise over time. In other markets, that is likely to reach something of the order of 70% based on our experience. The key thing is that what we are looking for is for those people who are not engaging to talk to us. At present, the only tool we have available to us in this regard is the legal process because they are not communicating with us in any other way.
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