AIB HAS REASSURED mortgage holders that they will not face higher than anticipated mortgage repayments in October after some customers received letters notifying them of a sudden increase.

In a statement today, the bank apologised to customers for “any anxiety caused” and will “take all corrective action necessary to resolve this issue for them”. 

The issue arose with a group of customers whose tracker mortgages with Ulster Bank were acquired by AIB when Ulster Bank exited from the market earlier this year.

Impacted mortgage holders received a letter stating that they had been under-charged on their mortgage for years by Ulster Bank and that their payments would increase in October to cover the difference.

AIB did not clarify how many customers received letters out of the 30,000 former Ulster Bank tracker mortgage holders it acquired but said the impacted customers either had mortgages due to expire or had made an out of course repayment.

The bank stated:

“AIB is working to resolve queries raised by some customers whose tracker mortgages moved to AIB as part of AIB’s recent purchase of Ulster Bank’s mortgage book.”

“The queries arose following a letter issued after the July ECB rate increase, resulting in customers being notified of a monthly payment change scheduled to take effect in October.”

Related Reads

AIB apologises to customers over binned cashless branch strategy

“For some customers the payment amount was higher than they expected.”

The Irish Independent reported that one man’s letter told him that his mortgage repayments were going up by more than €600 a month, multiple times more than what was expected as a result of the 0.25% interest rate increase by the ECB.

The bank stated that customers who received letters would be contacted again to ensure that “new repayment aligns with their expectations”, and that August and September’s payments would remain the same.