Professor Philip Lane:

The way the examination is working is that the banks have to come up with a model of compensation and redress for each affected customer. We are monitoring whether those designs and formulae are reasonable. As the Chairman indicates, the first responsibility is on the banks and they should take into account not just their legal requirement but also their role in society and the social responsibility to deliver fair outcomes for consumers. I would not view the legal minima as the benchmark here. That would apply in all of these cases. We will be and are quizzing the banks about various proposed model schemes for redress and compensation. In many cases there may be not a simple formula like the revenue because it is also the case that the individual circumstances of the debtor will matter and that may raise in the assessment of what a reasonable compensation is, given each case they face.

On Ulster Bank, of course we are aware of all publicly available information and with any financial institution through our supervisory engagement we have an awareness of many issues we cannot disclose. When the Ulster Bank executive team came before the committee they also explained their thinking about the relationship between what has been found by the FCA in the UK versus the prevalence of that issue here. There is no lack of information for us. In all cases we are not the ombudsman and are not going to process individual cases but if an individual or a group wants to add insight from their experience, that is part of the input we can take on in terms of how we supervise any institution.