BANK OF IRELAND has apologised to around 35,000 customers over an error in transferring some mortgages from KBC which affects customers’ repayment records. 

The Bank said the mortgage “start date” for a number of mortgages transferring from KBC to Bank of Ireland was “incorrectly inputted into our systems”. 

It said that as it was aware of this issue, Bank of Ireland did not submit the mortgage details to the Central Credit Register (CCR) for February and March while it is being fixed. 

“This was to prevent incorrect credit information being reflected on the customers’ credit report,” Bank of Ireland said in a statement. 

The Bank said it does “not believe this error is likely to affect the customer”. 

However, it added that “if somebody applied for a loan or another form of credit, the gap in the monthly updates to the CCR may have been seen by a lender, so they can use our letter as proof of the error”. 

Bank of Ireland said that to date, it has had no confirmation of a loan application being impacted, but added: “If any customer has a specific query they can contact our team and we will support”. 

It said it has also informed other lenders about the error. 

“We are updating the records as a priority and will write to customers again when it is resolved, which is expected in the next few weeks,” the Bank said. 

In February, Bank of Ireland and KBC completed a major transfer of assets as the latter bank prepares to pull out of Ireland.

Closing a deal that was first announced in April 2021, Bank of Ireland acquired substantially all of KBC Bank Ireland’s performing loan assets and deposits, as well as a small portfolio of non-performing mortgages and credit card balances.

The acquisition involves €7.6 billion of performing mortgages, €0.1 billion of mainly-performing commercial and consumer loans, €0.2 billion of non-performing mortgages, and €1.8 billion of deposits.