Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 19 October 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Withdrawal from Irish Banking Market (Resumed): Engagement with Ulster Bank and KBC Ireland

Ms Jane Howard:

It is the responsibility of the new bank to make the decision. It would have to do that to be in line with the guidelines from the Central Bank. It is important everybody follows those guidelines to keep customers safe. If a customer is good for the credit, namely, they have a good financial history with us and can show that, there is no reason they would not get the overdraft limit they have with Ulster Bank or KBC today. There are some customers - they are the 1,000 I referred to before - we think may need more help but we will work with those customers. We have reached out to them and asked them to contact us so our specialist people in our collections area can help them if they are in financial difficulty. The same applies to everybody, really, who has a debt in financial difficulty. That could be an overdraft, a credit card or mortgages, as we talked about earlier. With anybody in financial difficulty we constantly reach out and say "come and talk to us and let us see how we can help you". If somebody is good for the credit, with a good credit rating and no history of defaulting on any debts, there is no reason they would not get the overdraft they have with Ulster Bank today from another bank, but that receiving bank must follow the guidelines.

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