TSB’s Desperate bid to ward off ECB’s rate?
This April, the European Central Bank raised its rate to 1.25%. It seems Irish Life & Permanent needs to raise at least €4 billion in capital as ‘proetction’ against financial shocks.
The latest surprising turn of events is not so much for the bonus as it is for its timing and the size of the carrot. The bonus is offered to all tracker mortgages, residential, investment and commercial with the Permanent TSB. The mortgage will be available until June 17, news agencies are reporting.
There are reports that the period of the incentive would be extended if the scheme is successful.
Permanent TSB is the bank branch of Irish financial institutions Irish Life & Permanent. Irish Life & Permanent is reportedly losing money on its tracker mortgages and it is said that the bonus is an incetive of the TSB to encourage its about 70,000 tracker customers to make overpayments. If the ‘bonus’ atatins its objective, the incetive would cut the bank’s losses on funding the loans, said to be in the region of €400m a year.
A mortgage tracker account holder paying a lump sum of €5000 or more will have the bank adding a 10% bonus. The reason the incentive is even more surprising now is that the bonus was expected to be around 5% not a significant 10%. The 10 percent is easily two times higher than the premium savings index available in the market currently.