Group criticises bank complaints process

COMPANIES WITH an annual turnover of more than €3 million are being "automatically excluded" from having complaints about banks dealt with by the regulatory authorities, a group representing aggrieved ACC Bank customers has told an Oireachtas committee.

Friends of Banking Ireland (FBI), which represents customers in dispute with ACC and its Dutch parent company, Rabobank, yesterday called on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Economic and Regulatory Affairs to review the definition of consumer, as regulated by the Financial Regulator and the Financial Services Ombudsman.

The FBI chairman, Dublin builder Jerry Beades, who is involved in a long-running dispute with ACC, called on the committee to recommend the regulation of all financial services, covering both businesses and consumers.

Mr Beades said that when he tried to make a complaint about ACC, he was told by the regulator that he fell outside the definition of what constituted "a consumer" and his complaint could not be forwarded to the ombudsman.

The regulator said "incorporated bodies" with an annual turnover of more than €3 million are not regarded as "consumers" and that there was no similar complaints process for "non-consumers".

Labour TD Sean Sherlock, a committee member, said this was "an extraordinary scenario".

Mr Beades said that, according to Central Statistics Offices figures for 2004, half of all businesses could be "totally unprotected".

FBI has called for a framework to be established to track customer complaints in the banking and financial sector, and to create a dispute resolution process.

Mr Beades said he encountered difficulties with ACC after it was unable to provide title deeds to one of his properties in 2004.

A spokesman for ACC said it couldn't comment on issues raised by Mr Beades as it was taking a legal action against him. The bank is suing him for the repayment of loans worth €6.7 million.

Mr Beades said some grievances suffered by FBI members included the loss of title deeds and security documentation, and queries on loan offers and interest charges. ACC's spokesman said the bank could not comment on customers.

There is no "famine" in the mortgage market and 30,000 new mortgages were advanced in the first three months of the year, the Irish Banking Federation told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service.

IBF chief executive Pat Farrell said mortgage lending had declined due to the housing slowdown and the high cost of funding, but that the number of mortgages advanced in the first three months of this year was "not much different" to the number provided during the same period in 2005.