UK Landlords win legal battle over lenders unfair mortgage rate

This decision could be bad news for Bank of Ireland.

BOI's mortgage arm in the UK similarly relied on a clause in its T&Cs to ratchet up the margin over the Bank of England base rate on thousands of "lifetime" tracker mortgages in the UK.

Incidentally, the FCA received numerous complaints in relation to both these cases but chose not to take any action.
 
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I'm (somewhat) surprised that this judgment hasn't received any attention whatsoever in the Irish press.

BOI could take a serious hit if the logic of this ruling is applied to BOI's decision to vary the margin charged on certain of its UK trackers on the basis of an (IMO) somewhat ambiguous contractial term. That, frankly, wouldn't be a good news story for BOI shareholders (including the Irish taxpayer) or BOI's Irish customer base (borrowers or depositors).

To put this in context, the West Bromwich Building Society share price dived nearly 20% on foot of this ruling and BOI has nearly twice as many UK mortgage borrowers that may be in a similar position. We're talking about 10's of millions in potential refunds.

It's actually a pretty interesting decision in that it deals with the proper interpretation of inconsistencies between mortgage offer letters and mortgage T&Cs.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=504303ba-46c7-403e-92b6-4a4155dcca08
 
There usual trick, using clever terms and conditions to charge what they like. From what I've read, seems very unfair what they did there.
 
Case discussed on this thread (I'm surprised it took this long for it to be reported in the Irish press).
http://www.askaboutmoney.com/thread...tle-over-lenders-unfair-mortgage-rate.199237/

The key issue in the West Bromwich Building Society case was the proper interpretation of apparently inconsistent clauses in the mortgage offer letter and the mortgage T&Cs.

While the contract wording is different, the same basic issue arises on BOI's UK tracker contracts. Judging by BOI's quoted response, they obviously feel confident that their contract wording is sufficiently robust to withstand a similar challenge.
 
Looks like that case against BOI is fully funded and going ahead
 
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