Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 5 November 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform

Overview of Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland

3:55 pm

Mr. Liam McLoughlin:

We introduced that product in April 2013 in response to extensive customer research on the needs of customers in tracker mortgages. There have been over 400 applications under the standard terms, which are a five-year product with a 1% uplift in rate. The reason, we feel from customer feedback, that only one third have drawn down is that they are struggling to find the right house for themselves. They have approval and that approval stands, but they cannot find the appropriate property to move into, so it is a supply challenge in the first instance. We are not getting feedback on the product itself. There are different products in the marketplace from other suppliers that have been launched in the second half of 2014 but they are all about the same. It is predominantly a supply issue, particularly in the Dublin area.

On negative equity, we also introduced last year negative equity trade up-trade down for customers and those products are of a similar nature and have proved to be quite popular for customers who are in that situation but we will give negative equity loans in those situations where customers are in difficulty up to 175% loan-to-value, LTV.