Stanton fishing for claims

Are Irish banks really 10 times as virtuous as their British counterparts? That question was posed to me this week by Brady Collins, director of the UK financial claims management firm Stanton Fisher. I might know the answer. Do you?

Stanton, which handles claims against banks over mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI), also has an operation in Ireland with 8,000 clients. Collins is frustrated at the “disparity” between the PPI refunds regimes in the UK, where 75 per cent of its claims are paid out, and Ireland, where the figure is 7 per cent.

Another issue boiling Collins’s proverbial waters is that the statute of limitations here is applied from the date the policy was sold, as opposed to from the date a problem was discovered, like the UK. An Irish Stanton client recently issued proceedings against one institution aimed at overturning the way the statute is implemented.

Collins wants a public inquiry into mis-sold PPI in Ireland, and wants meetings with the Central Bank, politicians and anybody who will listen as part of its (client generating) lobbying campaign.

He also wrote to Richie Boucher, the Bank of Ireland boss, to ask about the difference between how the bank treats similar PPI cases in its UK branches compared to its home turf. "He didn't reply," said Collins.