Ms MaryRose McGovern:

If it is aware of a grievance having been articulated by a member of the public, the regulator can send the consumer to us to make a complaint and we can pick it up from there, but we can only act on foot of complaints.

We do more than investigate the complaints that are made to us. A large and important part of our work is the contribution to the prevention of complaints. This is where we see considerable value in the formal referrals that we make to regulatory authorities every year – there were ten last year and 15 the year before – where we identify individual complaint investigations that have led us to the view that there could be something systemic at play. We do not have visibility of the larger story. We simply see something in the evidence, which is why we make formal referrals.

It is also important to reference the additional sharing of information that we do with the regulatory authorities. In the past two years, we have shared 277 tracker mortgage decisions. We have also adopted the same approach to business interruption insurance decisions, of which we shared 65 in the past two years, so that the Central Bank will have an understanding of our perspective on those issues and how we come to our decisions.