Professor Philip Lane:

There is a new set of regulations for the protection of small businesses in how they are treated by the banks, which involves a lot more formality than previous regulations. Deputy Boyd Barrett indicated a case where a bank, perhaps in an arbitrary way, says it simply will not give a loan. Under the spirit of the new regulations, the reasons a loan is not given have to be laid down in a structured way. In turn, that documentation could be brought to the ombudsman or the appeals process if the customer does not accept the bank's reasoning. A customer may feel that he or she has made a resolution of a mortgage and that it is a totally separate entity from the small business loan he or she is looking for. With a more formalised, transparent approach, a bank's ability to rely on that kind of casual reasoning will hopefully be in the past.