Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 April 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Access to Finance for SMEs: Bank of Ireland, Ulster Bank and AIB

3:20 pm

Photo of Peter MathewsPeter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent)
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The last point relates to the business model and separating out existing and new business. I call on Ulster Bank to consider the point carefully. The experience of ICC Bank when it came to the maturity of a loan portfolio and the relationship with SME businesses over five, ten, 15 or 20 years was that there was an education for the customer and the lender or the lender executives in the relationship. Loans are not products. I keep hearing the expression from the banks that they have a product for this or that. They are five-, ten-, 15- or 25-year relationships of trust and involve supplying information both ways. That is what they are. They are priced according to the risks involved. If a bank decides that new business is to be separated from-----