Ms Jane Howard:

I will begin. Good afternoon to the Chairman and to the members of the committee and I thank them for inviting us to attend today's meeting. I am joined by Ulster Bank’s director of corporate affairs, Elizabeth Arnett. We welcome the opportunity to provide the committee with an update on Ulster Bank’s phased withdrawal from the Irish market. It is almost two years to the day since we announced our withdrawal. At that time, we committed to undertake a phased, orderly withdrawal; to provide support to customers for the changes that were coming; to protect as many jobs as possible; and to engage, in the first instance, with strategic banking partners in the Irish market for the sale of our assets.

We have made significant progress in closing the bank and with each major milestone we have delivered on these early commitments. This will be our fifth appearance at the committee since we announced our withdrawal so today I would like to update the committee on the progress we have made since our last appearance in October. However, by way of a reminder of the progress we have made, we have provided a high-level timeline with this opening statement which I will not read into the record in the interests of time.

Choose, Move, Close is our campaign to support customers moving their current and deposit accounts to another service provider. On the previous time we appeared before the committee, we updated it on the approach we were taking to engaging with customers and the progress we had made. At that time, we were about to start freezing and closing the accounts that had gone beyond their six-month notice period and had little or no customer activity. The key priority of Choose, Move, Close is to ensure customers have safely moved all of their day-to-day banking requirements to a new service provider. We have said to customers from the outset that the final step of closing their Ulster Bank accounts can be taken by them, or completed by us on their behalf. However, before we close accounts, the accounts are frozen. For most customers the account will then be queued for closure because they are no longer using the account. However, if a customer is still using the account beyond their six-month notice period then the freeze provides a final engagement opportunity. It can be temporarily reversed at the customer’s request, at which point we can provide the support the customer needs to move bank.

Since November we have frozen approximately 126,000 accounts that we believed customers were no longer reliant on. That means less than five transactions in a 31-day period. We did not freeze or close any known vulnerable customers’ accounts or accounts in receipt of Department of Social Protection payments.

Only 224 of these customers have asked for the freeze on their account to be lifted, primarily to facilitate the removal of funds, rather than wait for a cheque to issue. In each case we could lift the freeze almost immediately and provide the customer with the extra support they needed. Importantly, despite us freezing these accounts, there has been no spike in the opening of accounts across the industry, as reported by the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland, BPFI. What we can conclude is customers with a current account with less than five transactions in a 31-day window are no longer relying on Ulster Bank as their main service provider.

Some 91% of Ulster Bank personal current accounts are either closed or have five or less transactions. This increases to 95% when personal deposit accounts are included. This trend continues to increase every day for customers approaching their six-month deadline.

Some 81% of Ulster Bank business and commercial accounts are either closed, or with five or less transactions. These numbers continue to increase every day.

I would like to provide the committee with an update regarding customers in receipt of payments from the Department of Social Protection. This time last year 171,000 Ulster Bank customers were in receipt of payments from the Department. That number is now approximately 5,500, which means almost 97% of these customers now have these vital payments being made into an account with another financial institution. We are working very closely with the Department of Social Protection regarding this final group of customers. Approximately half of the remaining group are in receipt of child benefit and the remainder is broken down over a number of schemes, with no more than a few hundred customers in each. As the numbers have reduced so significantly, our efforts and those of the Department of Social Protection can now be very targeted and tailored to these customers’ requirements.

While we have not frozen any accounts in receipt of a Department of Social Protection payment, irrespective of activity level, that cannot be our enduring position. However, the numbers appear to be reducing at a rate that is encouraging. At the start of January, for example, we had 10,000 customers and we will keep the situation under review.

The next steps for Choose, Move, Close are as follows. We will continue to contact our customers, reminding them of the need to take action, advertising nationally and locally, engaging with advocacy groups and, of course, helping customers directly in-branch, online and over the phone. It is in customers best interests to be with another service provider who can meet their financial needs into the future. However, despite all of our best efforts there are approximately 20,000 personal current accounts that have gone beyond their six-month notice period, have not requested an extension and have had six or more transactions in the past month. These are customers who still appear to be reliant on us.

We are now moving to freeze these accounts as a final attempt to engage with these customers. We are ready to respond very quickly to support these customers.

I would like to acknowledge the co-ordinated efforts of the wider industry to support our customers in opening new accounts. I would also like to acknowledge the work undertaken by the Department of Social Protection, direct debit originators, industry peers and many stakeholders in supporting our customers.

In respect of our bank closures, the other significant announcement that we have made since we were here on our most recent visit is our plan to close our remaining branches. Our branch network will close on 21 April 2023, which will be two years and two months after we first announced our intention to withdraw from the Irish market. Ahead of this, on 31 March, we will cease business as usual transactional branch services and our arrangement with An Post will also end. This means from 31 March, customers will no longer be able to make cash or cheque lodgements, either at the counter, or through internal automation devices, or make any form of a withdrawal at an Ulster Bank branch, except for ATM services. Our colleagues will remain in the branches for a further three weeks to help customers complete their moves. Beyond that we will then leave a field team of colleagues to support any customers who might still require support. Our telephony and online service channels will remain in place following the branch closures.

We have been phasing the reduction of cash branch services for some time now. The committee may remember that as part of our phased withdrawal, in July of last year we closed counter services in branches in the afternoon so colleagues could concentrate on helping customers to prepare and move accounts. We also closed 25 branches in January of this year, with minimal disruption, and those branches are now part of the Permanent TSB network. The colleagues working in these branches also transferred or TUPE’ed - transfer of undertakings, protection of employment - to Permanent TSB as part of our agreement with them. As a result of this and other activity at a branch level, we have seen a corresponding substantial tailing off in branch activity, such that we are confident that our timelines for closing our branches is the right one.

Our branch closure announcement brings the much needed and much sought-after certainty to our branch colleagues. I would like to take this opportunity to thank publicly our front-line teams who throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and our withdrawal have continued to serve our customers with professionalism and care. In November, we opened two redundancy programmes and, as a result, some 600 colleagues will leave the bank via redundancy over the coming months, with the timeframe of exit aligned to the business need. Other colleagues have left and will continue to leave the bank through TUPE transfers as part of the bank’s transactions with Permanent TSB and AIB. We also expect to open another redundancy programme later this month, with further redundancy programmes later in 2023 and beyond as the work continues to reduce or cease.

I would like to focus on those customers who find themselves in financial difficulty as this was a point of interest at our previous appearance last October. In planning our withdrawal and the various phases of our closure, we could see from the outset that a non-performing loan, NPL, sale would be necessary. We set ourselves an objective of ensuring we do everything we can to support customers to revert to performing status so the NPL sale would be as small as possible. We have deliberately left the NPL sale to the later stages of our withdrawal journey to allow customers more time to revert to a performing status. What is clear from our experiences in supporting customers in financial difficulty is the importance of engaging them so we can consider each customer and their individual circumstances on a case-by-case basis. When customers engage with us in this process, more often than not, we can work with them to provide an appropriate solution that either keeps them in their home and-or avoids an impact on their credit rating, depending on the type of debt.

With regard to mortgages, we have applied a case clinic approach to supporting our customers in the non-performing mortgage book, and we have seen these loans reduce by about 25%. As a direct result of this support, some 1,200 customers have now been either included in our transactions with Permanent TSB or AIB or they have redeemed or settled their mortgage.

For customers with problematic overdrafts, we contacted these customers very early on in the process to offer them support. We have a suite of solutions available to these customers and we are working with them on a case-by-case basis to ensure that they, in so far as possible, do not have an impacted credit rating. While we still have some way to go right now, approximately 1,200 customers are being managed by our arrears support unit for overdrafts in excess of €1,000, with an additional 5,300 customers with an overdraft of less than €1,000. We will continue to provide support to these customers.

In September 2022, we wrote to all of our personal credit card customers, providing them with six months notice to choose an alternative provider if required, to move their recurring transactions, pay the outstanding balance and close their Ulster Bank credit card. Ulster Bank credit cards will no longer work from the end of the six-month notice period, or shortly thereafter. This six-month notice period will end on 22 March, next month. We are continuing to communicate with customers ahead of this date and assist those who may need additional support.

We have taken a very proactive approach to supporting vulnerable customers and have detailed this to the committee on previous occasions, so I will not repeat the evidence already presented at the committee. However, by way of a reminder, we have provided a list as a summary of our outreach work with these customers. I do not intend to read that into the record in the interests of time. Today, we have approximately 2,000 known vulnerable customers. Each one has been assigned to a member of our team and is getting individual support to assist them in moving to another bank. The majority of known vulnerable customers will be with a new service provider by the end of March, in advance of branches closing. Other vulnerable customers, such as those following the assisted decision-making route, will be well on the way in their journey to a new provider by that time too. Even after 21 April, we will still be supporting vulnerable customers with practical assistance with their move, for example, printing statements, providing them with a list of all their direct debits or conducting a warm handover by introducing them in person to a staff member in a bank of their choice.

There are many other aspects of our withdrawal that are ongoing and are likely of interest to the committee. As I said, we have made significant progress but we know there is a significant amount still to do and we are determined and committed to finishing well. In the interest of time, I will conclude my opening remarks and I look forward to the discussion and any questions.