Bank shouldn't have role in compensation panels

PTSB chief executive Jeremy Masding (left), who has faced calls for his resignation, yesterday repeated his apology for the failures of the bank

Donal O'Donovan Twitter Email

August 03 2015 12:30 AM

If anything, confusion has increased since Tuesday when Permanent TSB first announced a scheme to compensate customers caught up in its overcharging scandal.

The bank now insists that a "derisory" compensation offer of €50,000 for customers who had lost their homes because of its actions was never intended to be a full and final settlement for customers.

It was always meant to be a holding payment while machinery to determine a final offer was being established, it now says.

Good, but why not be clearer about that in the first place? And why is the bank involved in the compensation process at all?

The bank's nominees, subject to approval by the Central Bank, will make up the membership of two committees that are being set up to expedite settlement for wronged borrowers.

One panel will be totally independent. On the other, dealing with the less extreme customer cases, bank officials are set to have a role. That should not happen.

It's hard to know why the bank is allowed to have any role at all in settling these cases. It should certainly not be allowed direct input into the compensation process.

Permanent TSB came out with its hands up and admitted it wrongly blocked borrowers from benefiting from the low interest rates they were entitled to, only after dragging complaints from those customers out for years through a protracted, and worse doomed, legal campaign.

The bank is compensating customers now because it is subject to an enforcement action from the regulator - after the Central Bank belatedly woke up to the issue. No one who has watched this drag out for four years can have faith in the bank's approach to its customers, or its tracker problem.

Bank shouldn't have role in compensation panels

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