Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 28 September 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Banking Sector in Ireland (Resumed): Permanent TSB and KBC Bank

9:45 am

Mr. Wim Verbraeken:

As I outlined in my opening statement, the bank is still going through the examination process, working closely with the Central Bank. We started that process in 2016. By the end of September 2016, we had come to an initial determination and an initial plan through the Central Bank. Since then, we have undertaken further review which is very complex and is essentially an iterative process. It is very comprehensive. We are determined to capture all the customers who have been impacted. We deployed considerable resources to that effort, which is still ongoing. It is because that effort is still ongoing and the bank's board of directors has not yet come to a final determination that we believe it is premature to disclose any interim partial figures or amounts. It is complex and comprehensive in that we are not only looking at customers with regard to contractual rights but also the context, transparency and disclosure which brings element of subjectivity to considerations. That is what we are doing.

We are developing our determination around the identification of customers affected, plus a scheme for redress and compensation for those customers who will ultimately have been identified as being in scope and affected. That will be submitted to our board of directors and then obviously transferred to the Central Bank. I cannot give the committee a specific timeline with respect to the completion of that effort. We are determined to do this as soon as possible. We want to conclude the matter as soon as possible because we believe it is in the interests of the bank, consumers and the financial market in general, but our first priority is to be comprehensive and to be sure we do not leave any customers outside the scope.

To return to the specific question on the customers we have put back on the correct rate, the matter arose earlier in 2017. It concerns a batch of customers we had identified in the course of the effort we expended in 2016. This is, presumably, not a final cohort of customers whom we will put back on the correct rate.

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