Mr. Andrew Blair:

The Senator may recall that when we were here last we had a fairly lengthy discussion about the process that had been ongoing at that stage in what was known as Project Sapphire. This was the investigation that the Financial Conduct Authority conducted into the activities of GRG in Great Britain. To be clear, the investigation was undertaken by the Financial Conduct Authority within the United Kingdom. Ulster Bank chose to adopt the things RBS had committed to at that stage. There were two parts to that. One was to institute a new complaints process overseen by an independent third party, who was a High Court judge. The second part was to undertake an automatic refund of any fees which could be described as complex fees, that is, ones which were perhaps beyond the transparency requirements that might have been appropriate for small and medium-sized enterprise customers. Throughout that process since 8 November last year, we have been keeping the Central Bank informed of the progress we have made.

At this point, we have made a considerable amount of progress in terms of both complaints and the refund of complex fees. As things stand today, I am happy to share some statistics with the committee. We have identified 19 customers who would be entitled to a refund of a complex fee. Of those 19 customers, four have already been refunded the amount due, totalling €362,000. A further five are in the process of returning the identification documentation we need to make those refunds. Of the remaining ten, we are working through making contact with those customers and are at the third attempt to make contact with them to make repayment.

On complaints, at this point Ulster Bank has received 48 complaints since we went out on the website seeking complaints, which is a period of approximately nine months now. Of those, four have already been adjudicated. We are expecting another 13 to be adjudicated by the end of October. That is approximately 35% of the complaints. The complaints process is complex and it is overseen by an independent third party. We will work our way through them as fast as we can. Given their complexity, we expect that some of those complaints will run into the first quarter of next year.