Vested interests, a lot of money to be made.
The Muldoon (actual name) one who was acting on behalf of one of the insurance companies worked for the insurance regulators prior to going to the private sector. Think she has at least one bullying claim made against her. She kept her mouth shut in that clip.
I don’t think that’s true, once they are licenced to sell insurance in the EU they can passport to Ireland. It’s part of the core principles of freedom of trade.
They do have to notify the central bank if they intend to operate here, but I think the central bank are limited enough in terms of stopping them, relying instead on their home countries central bank to regulate them. Of course this should be fine in theory but in practice it’s led to insurance companies setting up where the laws are more lax.
Moves have been made to tighten up the regulations across the EU so everyone is on a level playing field and I think they have made it more difficult alright following the collapse of Setanta etc (who were Malta based I think) to just rock in and start selling insurance, but they still can’t stop you.
Now it’s a while since I looked at that so it could have changed since, but it certainly was the case, that if you setup a branch here you were under Irish regulators scrutiny, but if you didn’t you were under your home countries scrutiny.
You’d sometimes hear it on the radio add that a company or their underwriters are regulated by the UK authority or Gibraltar etc
From the CB website.
https://centralbank.ie/news/article/central-bank-can’t-lower-premiums-can-hold-insurers-to-account
On the first point, the Central Bank has intervened successfully in recent years to ensure the solvency of Irish insurers. Irish insurance companies providing so-called non-life cover (typically motor and home insurance), and which are prudentially regulated by the bank, ran up combined motor underwriting losses of €684m from 2013 to 2015, mainly due to the gap between premiums and claims. To ensure these companies remained solvent at all times - and therefore could fully cover any policy holders’ claims that arose – the bank intervened forcefully, requiring these insurers to increase their capital by €615m in that same period. This year to date, we have required an additional €142m increase in solvency capital. In addition, we have ensured these firms have increased support from their parent companies and have put in place more extensive reinsurance cover in a number of cases.
As a result of the bank’s actions, all Irish insurers have remained solvent and open for business in the period in question, despite their extensive losses. Their customers have been protected from the loss their failure would have caused. What happens when things go wrong can be seen in the case of two foreign insurers operating in Ireland – Setanta and Enterprise.
These companies were based outside Ireland and regulated in Malta and Gibraltar. As per European law, both firms were able to sell insurance in Ireland without any further authorisation from the Central Bank. However, both companies became insolvent and policyholders were left without cover. We have worked closely with the regulators in these countries to ensure that policyholders were fully informed of what was happening quickly and what actions they needed to take.
We have been proactive with foreign insurance regulators to ensure that they have a full understanding of the issues affecting the Irish market and to impress on them their role to ensure Irish policyholders are protected. Ultimately, however, it is for them to act on the knowledge we provide them with.
@glasagusban mortgages are a whole different issue, in theory you can get a mortgage from say a German bank for an Irish property legally, but the reality is no bank is going to get involved in a mortgage market without a presence on the ground and a local team with market knowledge etc. The fact that it’s practically impossible to take a house off someone in this country no matter if they pay their mortgage or not makes it fairly unattractive to new entrants too.
That’s a whole different issue altogether
I think that’s a myth.
What that it’s hard to get a house off someone?
He’ll make a fine Taoiseach one day
Yeah. I mean the banks simply didn’t want to repossess non performing loans for a long time.
According to this about 3,300 homes have been repossessed since the financial crisis. Considering the amount of people who were in arrears and who are still in arrears that’s a tiny proportion, would lead me to believe it is indeed very difficult to repossess a house.
the CCPC should be investigating them for cartel behaviour, they didnt and DG comp had to come in and do dawn raids, id expect the investigations from this to bear fruit.
No its not If its their family homd
Should everyone home in arrears be repossessed? Clearly not. Many go into arrears and come up with a payment plan and that’s fine. For a long long time homes were in massive negative equity, why would banks want to repossess them. I’m not saying it’s not difficult to repossess, it is, and should be, but it’s not a barrier to entry to the market or a reason mortgage costs are higher here. I haven’t it suggested anywhere that we protect holders of mortgages in arrears more than other eu countries.
There you go mate
He also said that the State should get rid of its stakes in the banks at a faster rate in order to foster competition and so drive down mortgage rates.
The key point I’d the government don’t want to reduce mortgage rates as it’ll affect the banks.
I’ll stand corrected on this, but my understanding is that other eu mortgage operators need a central bank license to operate here. Is that not so?
I’d say you’re factually incorrect. It is harder, largely due to political noise, historical precedents etc, to repossess a house in Ireland. The courts are very reluctant to quickly enforce contracts and will only do it as a last resort.
The rights and wrongs of this can be argued over and people will have different perspective but it is inarguable that in a case where a bank finds it difficult to enforce a contract, they have to pass the costs on elsewhere (typically returns need to track risk and non-enforceable contracts are riskier) and also are much more wary of future loans. Essentially those costs are passed onto current mortgage holders and other bank customers. Finally, as we own large stakes in the main mortgage banks, who are still struggling to deal with this issue a decade on, effectively this reduces the taxpayers return on that investment, funded by government debt. So everyone pays through reduced gov services etc.
Couldn’t be arsed doing digging on the facts but a simple effort would show that the number of repossessions vs the number of houses in arrears etc is disproportionate and that there are still a huge number of mortgage holders, retaining ownership of their properties, that are in arrears for years and years.
You are massively less likely to get turfed out of your home here than in UK for example.
UB put up for sale 900m of loans that were more than 6 years in arrears last week. 90% were family homes. Thats probably 4000 individual cases Id say AIB has a multiple of this.
Its a 6 or 7 year process to enforce family home security, and impossible if the borrower engages properly with the process. Im not passing any comment about the rights or wrongs of it but thats the process
some depressing stats here
https://www.centralbank.ie/docs/default-source/statistics/data-and-analysis/credit-and-banking-statistics/mortgage-arrears/residential-mortgage-arrears-and-repossession-statistics-march-2019.pdf?sfvrsn=4
I don’t think recent statistics about the Irish housing market are going to accurately inform a view on how difficult it is to repossessed a home in Ireland, do you?
You genuinely believe that repossessing a house in Ireland is no more difficult that elsewhere - say for example the UK or the States?
why not? surely the in arrears over 720 days will inform to a point when read with the number of repossessions over the last 5 years