KBC Mortgage Transfers

When Bank of Ireland acquired the Belgian-owned KBC Bank Irish mortgage portfolio in February 2023, an error affected approximately 35,000 transferred mortgage accounts. KBC had left the Irish market in the shadow of their own hugely damaging tracker misbehaviour.

Incorrect mortgage start dates were entered by Bank of Ireland into its systems, leading the bank to withhold information from the Central Credit Register while the records were corrected. This was not an isolated failure. Bank of Ireland had already been fined €24.5 million for serious IT service continuity and internal-control failings, and €463,000 following earlier Central Credit Register reporting failures affecting approximately 47,000 customers. The Bank of Ireland transfer error raises further questions about the bank’s systems, operational controls and due diligence.

In some cases, customers who were transferred to Bank of Ireland from KBC report significant health, marital, business and financial harm due to overcharging. They speak of a continued denial of issues from Bank of Ireland senior leadership and Board members, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that insufficient due diligence was conducted by Bank of Ireland on its purchase of overcharged mortgages in the KBC loan book.

They highlight the sustained harm done to their own small business by Bank of Ireland’s behaviour, including admitted false credit issues being shared by Bank of Ireland with the Central Credit Register (CCR) resulting in catastrophic damage and the continued denial of credit before and during 2026 as a result of these persistent failures.

Tragically, they also record a business being forced to close completely unnecessarily as a result of persistently poor behaviour by Bank of Ireland. Disturbingly, prior to any litigation, and despite repeated pleas in writing to CEO Myles O’ Grady, they recount a pattern of documented and adamant refusals by the Bank to meet with them - despite a litany of financial harm and their documented ill health. Meanwhile Bank of Ireland was threatening to repossess the property - even though at the time Bank of Ireland was overcharging the borrower.

They note that Bank of Ireland, with the full knowledge and oversight of its Board, led by Chair Akshaya Bhargava and Independent Director Michele Greene continues to pursue an aggressive and resource-intensive defensive legal strategy, in what they say appears to them to be a deliberate attempt to weaken the ability of small-business and individual litigants to pursue legitimate claims to a conclusion.

Such examples of the adversarial culture faced by those who challenge Bank of Ireland, seemingly contradict the many public pronouncements of CEO Myles O’ Grady about trust and accountability - all the while asking serious questions of Board effectiveness.