AIB Group fined record €96.7m for role in tracker mortgage scandal

• Published date: 23 June 2022
• Publication title: Irish Times: Web Edition Articles (Dublin, Ireland)

Some 21 of the properties were family homes. The regulator imposed a €83.3 million penalty on AIB and a €13.4 million sanction on EBS

The group fine is 2½ times the regulator's previous highest financial sanction, imposed on Ulster Bank in March last year for its involvement in the Irish banking industry's biggest overcharging affair.

"Our investigation found that when AIB withdrew its tracker mortgage offering [in 2008] there was no proper regard or concern for the impact on its customers," said Seána Cunningham, the Central Bank's director of enforcement. "What followed was a litany of failings where customers were wrongly denied their tracker entitlements and others lost their tracker rates due to AIB's deficiencies in its provision of day to day mortgage services."

Ms Cunningham said that AIB had opportunities to address those failings over the years but failed to do so. AIB took over EBS in 2011 on foot of a government order in the middle of the financial crisis. The group required a €20.8 billion taxpayer bailout.

The Central Bank said that AIB and EBS's misdeeds warranted a €138 million sanction, before applying a standard 30 per cent discount to cases that are settled. The AIB group had set aside €70 million on its balance sheet as of the end of last year to cover its "best estimate" of an expected financial penalty.

In a statement, AIB Group said it "profoundly regrets" its failures in relation to tracker mortgages and "apologises unreservedly for the impact on our customers' lives, particularly the devastating consequences for those people who lost their homes".

The group's chief executive Colin Hunt described...