FSPO slow in dealing with banks who misclassified payment breaks as arrears cases

[DMcC24]

@noseynu
I'm in the same boat as yourself at this point. Original complaint submitted in Jan/ Feb '23, was quickly through a (rejected) mediation which was a total nonsense if being honest. We have now had two years back and forth on an open/ shut case of the Bank lying through their teeth. I have requested a Legal review on the basis of material that has been obtained via multiple DAR's and the behavior of the Bank in their extremely sluggish release of info. That request went into the FSPO in September last and the file has been shelved ever since. I have now raised a complaint to their own Complaints Section (the irony) and despite being told earlier that it would be 6 months to appoint a Legal Review Officer to commence the review, we are now in month 7, pushing on for month 8. I'm told that next week (now this week) that they will be corresponding with me shortly as to the appointment. There will be no holding of breath.

You can see immediately why the Banks throw out low ball offers in the hope (expectation) that people will just give up as a result of this ludicrously long process. They are laughing at their own customers, and why wouldn't they.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

I have requested a Legal review on the basis of material that has been obtained via multiple DAR's and the behavior of the Bank in their extremely sluggish release of info. That request went into the FSPO in September last and the file has been shelved ever since. I have now raised a complaint to their own Complaints Section (the irony) and despite being told earlier that it would be 6 months to appoint a Legal Review Officer

To be fair, you are just adding to the delays yourself at this stage.

If the bank was "lying through its teeth", then this would be obvious to the FSPO and they would take that into account in making their decision.

 

[DMcC24]

stage.

I don’t believe that is an entirely fair analysis, particularly in the absence of fuller information.

The FSPO have already told me that they would not be making additional enquiries from this institution over and above the information that I provide.

The only way that proper evidence can be secured is by way of Data Acess Request which at this point we are now in double figures. If the FRL’s were the only things to be produced by the Bank, you’d be as well to close the investigation now, with no case to answer and have us apologising for inconveniencing them.

We have managed to uncover further negligent misreporting on thousands of tracker accounts, which as I said would not have come to light had it not been for our DAR’s.

In the three years that the investigation has been open there has been nothing meaningful from the FSPO except a post box exchange of correspondence.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

We have managed to uncover further negligent misreporting on thousands of tracker accounts, which as I said would not have come to light had it not been for our DAR’s.

Well if you have evidence of this, then you should bring it to the attention of the Central Bank. They won't get back to you but they will take it up with the institution and if your accusation holds up, they will be told to redress these thousands of people and no one will need to go to the Ombudsman.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

The only way that proper evidence can be secured is by way of Data Acess Request which at this point we are now in double figures. If the FRL’s were the only things to be produced by the Bank, you’d be as well to close the investigation now, with no case to answer and have us apologising for inconveniencing them.

No one can really comment on this as you provide no details. The vast majority of DARs that I have seen have been just wasting time.

You had a complaint about something. You must have made that complaint based on information you had - a mortgage contract or a letter from the bank. There really should be no need for a DAR or "double figures" of them and I suspect that the Ombudsman is correct in telling you that they add no evidential value.

I have seen lots of complaints going into banks and the Ombudsman. Some are valid. Many are not valid. Many of the invalid ones have people who imagine some big conspiracy and it's really they are just not thinking clearly due to their annoyance. In time the Ombudsman looks at their complaint , summarises it and gives his decision which is usually a rejection.

 

[DMcC24]

Well if you have evidence of this, then you should bring it to the attention of the Central Bank. They won't get back to you but they will take it up with the institution and if your accusation holds up, they will be told to redress these thousands of people and no one will need to go to the Ombudsman.

The findings have been submitted to the both the Consumer Affairs and Regulation sections of the Central Bank.

These deal with the treatment of historic payment holidays which were legitimately sought by a minimum of 1,500 account holders whose accounts were incorrectly reported on, to the CBI as distressed borrowers for 68 months. Many of these had passed through the Bank's (their Auditors, and the independent, forensic Accountants) Tracker Mortgage Review, where the misreporting was also missed. The first report to the CBI noted a time window of effected accounts of 18 months. By the time the Letters of explanation issued by this particular Bank, the window for effected accounts grew to 68 months. We are only surmising but it is highly unlikely to have only been 1,500 accounts that were incorrectly red flagged to the CBI by the time their negligence was discovered.

In that timeframe, all of those accounts were described as distressed, the institution moved these dealing to their arrears support unit and if you sought new money be it there or elsewhere in that time frame, a quick search of your credit rating had you as a distressed borrower. I should add that the 68 months ran well into the COVID years where undoubtably payment breaks/ Holidays increased significantly, indeed a figure of 175,000 payment breaks across the industry was noted at the Central Bank's symposium in Nov' 22. Just how many of those have been misreported on is anyone's guess.

You are certainly correct to say that we are annoyed, but would like to think that we have retained some degree of sense with our dealing with the FSPO and the institution involved. We would maintain that the timelines are ridiculously poor at this point and not because of delays caused by us as ordinary consumers.