Anthony Joyce & Co. Solicitors have been at the forefront of the tracker mortgage scandal since July 2015 when Permanent TSB announced a redress scheme at their Annual General Meeting.
Since then it has emerged that all the main banks i.e. Permanent TSB plc, AIB Plc, Bank of Ireland plc, KBC Bank and Ulsterbank etc have been overcharging their clients.
Coincidentally the policy decision by each of the banks to withdraw their tracker mortgage options took place at the same time. Each of the banks have attempted to compensate their customers in different ways.
However, it has been necessary for us to issue Court proceedings in hundreds of cases whereby we have forced the banks to offer further compensation for our clients.
In and around February and March 2018, AIB wrote out to over 5,000 customers, posting them a cheque for €1,615 being €1,000 compensation and €500 & VAT for independent professional advice on the basis that they were not offered a tracker mortgage when they ought to have been.
AIB state that the “prevailing rate” would have been prohibitively expensive and their customers would not have chosen that rate anyway.
The margin ranging from 7% to 9% seems to be plucked from nowhere. A group of the AIB customers appealed this decision to the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman (FSPO) who found against AIB in January 2020.
In February 2020 AIB announced that they would be issuing payments in July and August 2020 to their customers.
However, there is no detail as to the calculations and we expect that AIB are attempting to find a scheme that they can justify paying as little to their customers as possible.
Again, we expect AIB to retrospectively apply the current level (being a variable rate at approximately 3%) to the period since the beginning of the tracker entitlement.
Further AIB will likely provide a flat rate of compensation which will not take into account their customers’ individual circumstances beyond broad brush strokes.
AIB call their group of customers affected by their overcharging antics as a “cohort” which appears to switch the tone to victim-blaming.
Whilst progress against the banks has been slow and laborious, our experience in dealing with the tracker mortgage cases to date means that we are now well placed to quickly assess our client’s cases, the levels of compensation and whether it would be worthwhile issuing Court Proceedings.
It is our opinion that AIB’s calculation for overcharging will be skewed in favour of the bank and the compensation will not be adequate. Whilst we have assisted our clients to recover compensation via the bank’s own appeals process, ultimately the Courts will set the levels and should do so on a pro-consumer basis.
Please feel free to contact us now for us to act on your behalf to investigate your claim, challenge the bank and maximise your redress. Our terms are generally calculated on a no win no fee basis but we do ask you to pay us the amount paid by the bank for independent advice if offered in the up-dated redress letters to cover our initial outlays and advice.