Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 5 November 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform

Overview of Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland

4:45 pm

Mr. Richie Boucher:

First of all, on the issue of lessons and things we do not do - which is worse, what you do do and what you do not do? We do not finance landbank acquisitions in the construction sector. They should be financed by equity. The maximum loan-to-value rate would be somewhere between 65% and 70%. We need to see pre-sales for the commercial market, but we recognise it is not possible to get pre-sales in the residential market. Those are key criteria. We also do not do an equity release from the single property nor do we lend against an uplift in value. Those are some of the lessons we learned. One of the other big lessons from the past is the need to keep an eye on the peripheral vision of the market. We thought we could work our way out of certain situations. We were not as conscious of to what was going on in other banks. That was a mistake we made.

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