Letter of mortgage offer forged by the bank

God Gerry you really knew some bad bankers!

As a mortgage advisor at the time I never knowingly let through anything I thought was dodgy, I did come across some doubtful stuff with brokers when we dealt with them and as a result we wouldn't deal with them (by the way there were good brokers too). Then all the broker stuff was rerouted direct through HO, I don't doubt for a minute that strange things went on but not everyone was at it!

I spent a day in HO at the time, looking at the lending route, at the just before loan offer issue stage the guy double checking and sending out the loan offers was telling me he had to double check details by ringing client etc before issue. He showed me one example of a loan application and offer where the young applicant had submitted an accountant's report with 3 years figures in self employment despite being only about 21, nice figures too, he was living in a Dublin suburb but was buying somewhere in the middle of the country and when he rang the only contact number which was a mobile it was an inactive number. He said when he questioned it with his superiors he was told send out the loan offer and if he didn't like it he knew where the door was!
 
He showed me one example of a loan application and offer where the young applicant had submitted an accountant's report with 3 years figures in self employment despite being only about 21, nice figures too, he was living in a Dublin suburb but was buying somewhere in the middle of the country and when he rang the only contact number which was a mobile it was an inactive number. He said when he questioned it with his superiors he was told send out the loan offer and if he didn't like it he knew where the door was!

People were also able to use false P60's.

One 'mortgage' the bank gave me they were in such a hurry to shovel out the money they decided that it was easier to give me a loan instead of a mortgage. I was told the paperwork was easier. Funnily enough a couple of years ago I fixed the rate and it's tied to money markets or something and it was harder to fix than it was to get the original loan. The bank had to telephone me and my husband at the moment of fixing. And a few years before that a guy rang me from the bank and told me they'd overcharged me about 10K and he'd only noticed because I had been talking to him that week about something else and they were having a monthly meeting about customers and he noticed my name and that brought it to his attention. That loan is cheaper than a mortgage too because my 'margin' was low.
 
Takes two to tango. I am a finance professional and I bumped into an old school friend in early-2008 (maybe before). He was in a no-great-shakes job (like the rest of us then/now) but he requested I draw up a few P60s for him for his next few investments.

Until then I - naivety personified - had never thought of this practice.

Luckily I made the point of ensuring we wouldn't bump into each other again to avoid awkward requests/refusals and I haven't seen him since.

I did hear through the grapevine that life treated him harshly in the round, and the undoubted collapse in value of his investments could only have hit him harder. When he had enough to be dealing with.

A few prison sentences for white-collar crime wouldn't go astray in this country. Inventing P60s and finding willing-accomplices is not something which a non-Finance person can do for themselves.
 
Mobretia, thanks for the info. I do not know about the timing of issuing new traker loan offers. Maybe, maybe not.

In their response the BOI complaints department confirmed to me that the tracker was indeed available to me in mid July and that they pulled the product in early October. They could have said, like you explained, that new tracker loan offers were not issued in July. end of story. Instead they first argued that I never applied, and when I showed them in the application that I did, they argued that it was broker who amended the application. But if the broker did not get paid extra for signing customers to inferior products, it is hard to explain then. Then the only explanation is that the bank may have asked brokers to steer customers away from trackers as a favour, after all, they get paid and have a relationship with the bank, 100s of loans.
 
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