Ulster Bank is planning to pay out “tens of millions of euros” in compensation to customers affected by a technical problem at the bank.
Chief executive Jim Brown said bank was talking to the Financial Regulator about how to apply the compensation but admitted a considerable sum of money, valued at “tens of millions of euros”, had been set aside. Details of the compensation scheme will be announced shortly.
He said customers had been severely inconvenienced as a result of the problem and the bank would refund any incorrectly applied fees and charges and ensure customers’ credit ratings were not damaged.
Mr Brown said it could take several more weeks to finally clear the backlog of transactions built-up during the technical fault.
He said most Ulster Bank customer accounts were now up-to-date, although a “small percentage” of outstanding transactions and incidents of double-charging were still being processed.
For the majority of customers it was “business as usual”, with all the bank’s systems now running as normal.
“Given the scale of the incident, the clean up continues and a small percentage of outstanding transactions are being processed over the next couple of days,” he said.
“There is no doubt that there will be reconciliations to some customer accounts that also need to take place over the coming days and weeks.”
The bank has promised to refund all fees and charges that had been incurred by its customers or those of other banks as a result of the computer glitch that occurred last month and caused delays in transactions and left some customers without access to funds for more than three weeks.
That includes overdraft fees and interest, late payment fees and interest on mortgages, loans and credit cards, and interest wrongly charged on late payments.
Customers would also be awarded all the interest on missing savings or current account payments, including interest on cash customers withdrew from savings accounts when wages were not paid on time.
Credit ratings would also be protected, the banks said.
“We know that this is a significant concern for customers and we are working with the credit reference agencies to ensure that no customer's credit rating is affected as a result of this incident.”
