BoI chief rejects accusation that bankers lack humanity

Bank of Ireland chief executive Richie Boucher said he had personal family experience with financial difficulties and rejected the characterisation of bankers who didn’t care about struggling mortgage holders.

Mr Boucher was pushed on the subject of how banks had dealt with those left in arrears, following the financial crisis, by the chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Finance John McGuinness.

“The amount of hardship that your bank and others have put on individual borrowers chasing your money is significant. And it would be remiss of me, at this meeting, if I were not to say to you that I believe you treat people badly,” Mr McGuinness said during a three-hour committee hearing on Thursday.

He raised the fact Bank of Ireland had received €4.8 billion in State bailouts and charged the sector with the ill-treatment of those who could not afford to meet their debts.

“There are families out there in deep distress. Some of them have lost members through suicide because of the impact that this whole banking crisis has had on them,” he said.

However, Mr Boucher said the bank continued to engage with those in arrears and that, in 90 per cent of cases, solutions could be found.

Responding to questions from the chair, he said he had attended court for repossession cases and sat in on calls where colleagues have been dealing with customers in arrears.

“I have personal experiences of people who have lost businesses, my own family experience of that,” he said.

“So, it’s not as if I don’t understand, and this characterisation that we don’t understand, I don’t agree with. Both as a business and as a human being and as an individual, I have seen what happens.”

He then roundly rejected the accusation that bankers in Ireland lacked humanity or compassion for those in distress saying: “I think that is unfair and I think it is wrong.”