IBA invites you to… never mind…actually, we changed our mind. (PIBA & IBA merger is cast out)

The Irish Broker Association (IBA) made an approach to the Professional Insurance Brokers Association (PIBA) whereby their 300 strong membership might amalgamate with PIBAS nearly 800. They all went into a room and entered negotiations. This wasn’t a case where one had a gun to another’s head, it was something that would be of mutual benefit to all brokers in Ireland, because brokers, unlike almost any other industry, don’t have a single representative body.

So it makes total sense right? Of course it does! Standing as a united front and being able to ensure that members reach certain standards of operation, giving a voice to a multi-million euro industry, there is such great scope that I figured ‘even if we have to get over 75% in favour we’ll still be able to do it’. And we were.

Actually, PIBA were, the votes came in and in a voice of unity we voted with an 80% majority to go ahead and make one proper representative body.

The IBA on the other hand, who actually made the approach for all of this …

Read More →

IBA invites you to… never mind…actually, we changed our mind. (PIBA & IBA merger is cast out)

The Irish Broker Association (IBA) made an approach to the Professional Insurance Brokers Association (PIBA) whereby their 300 strong membership might amalgamate with PIBAS nearly 800. They all went into a room and entered negotiations. This wasn’t a case where one had a gun to another’s head, it was something that would be of mutual benefit to all brokers in Ireland, because brokers, unlike almost any other industry, don’t have a single representative body.

So it makes total sense right? Of course it does! Standing as a united front and being able to ensure that members reach certain standards of operation, giving a voice to a multi-million euro industry, there is such great scope that I figured ‘even if we have to get over 75% in favour we’ll still be able to do it’. And we were.

Actually, PIBA were, the votes came in and in a voice of unity we voted with an 80% majority to go ahead and make one proper representative body.

The IBA on the other hand, who actually made the approach for all of this …

Read More →

The Vultures are here….

When the government raised the bar for stamp duty to €317,500 house prices took a jump and suddenly every house was valued at €317,500. This meant that a huge amount of stamp never entered government coffers and many people blamed estate agents. Rightly so, it was a disgrace but it happened and now we can’t reverse time.

Once bitten, twice shy. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice….. (in the words of GW Bush) well…. you’re not gonna fool me twice. Alas, yes, we have been fooled twice, for no sooner had the government introduced extensive increases in mortgage interest relief than they were swooped upon and devoured.

How? By the likes of Ulsterbank who increased their rates (especially the ones available to first time buyers) only the day before. So all of the money that the tax payer spends to suppliment the mortgage interest relief and all of the governments best efforts are once again halted by greed.

Estate agents took a beating over the house price increases when stamp duty was reformed, and developers too as …

Read More →

Talk the Talk (part 2)

As part of the ethics in writing this article I made a decided point of not actually reading my initial article so there is no way of knowing if in general I was right or wrong. Anyways, I am pleased to present the second installment and can only say at this point that I hope my integrity is intact come the end of it all. The numbers and the paragraphs below them are the originals from the article at the end of 2005, the Result & Humiliation score are todays take on what actually happened since they were written.

6. Product or client specific lenders

We have already spoken about ‘sub-prime’ lenders, this is product or client specific lending based on a pre-set target market, but who’s to say it shouldn’t work both ways? What about a lender who deals only with people who earn over €100,000 or who have a net worth of €1,000,000? Previously this may have been the stock and trade of the ‘private banking’ wing of certain banks but there is scope for this type of …

Read More →

Talk the talk and walk the walk (economically speaking)

I wrote an article back at the end of 2005 called ‘the changing face of the mortgage market’ and I sent it off to a few newspapers and several magazines, it went largely un-noticed, when I say ‘largely’ I actually mean ‘totally’. Apparently I was ranting lunacy or something close to it, if you know me you’ll also know that this was a possibility….

Last weekend in a smokey Krakow it was mentioned during a conversation that you need to make a call on things and then fall on your face when you are wrong but remain vindicated when you are right. In the spirit of that conversation (with thanks to our own resident Enda Munnelly) I will list the predictions I had and then we can either collectively laugh at me or not. The main thing is that I put my predictions on the line and show whether or not I can walk the walk.

1. More than 100%!

Traditionally there were two things stopping people from getting a mortgage, the first was qualifying for the loan, the second …

Read More →

Ulster Bank, cutting out brokers, and perhaps Consumers too?

I guess the best thing to do is quickly outline the way things have worked since the inception of the broker industry in Ireland.

Brokers start their own companies and place business with larger companies, there are several types of brokers, some are tied (this means they only place business with one company) and independent – which is what Irish Mortgage Brokers are – and we have a panel of 15 banks and 5 insurance companies.

We have traditionally been paid 1% of the loans we send a bank as a ‘commission’ or income, so the client normally doesn’t have to pay a broker fee because the costs are covered by the commission. Brokers are paid because broker business (which counts for almost 60% of all mortgages done in this country) is a clean and profitable source of business for banks, they don’t have to pay for the brokers staff, their light, heat, holiday time etc. They do however have to pay for all of these things when a loan is done at branch level (e.g.: the loan is done …

Read More →

Credit Freeze and the effects on the ECB

The credit markets in the U.S.A., Asia, and Europe are in the midst of a freeze at the moment. Banks are not willing to lend to each other hence the big hike in the Euribor (European inter bank ordinary rate: this is the rate that banks lend to each other at) rates and in the U.K. the Libor (London inter bank ordinary rate) rates, they are trading much higher than the central bank rates and this indicates that there is (to a degree) a general mistrust between banks, mainly because they don’t know the exposure to sub-prime exposure the other may have.

The response thus far has been a Fed rate cut, this came a little late, and the indication is that Ben Bernanke will cut the rates again within the next week. Earlier in the year (March 28th) Bernanke claimed that ‘the impact on the broader economy & financial markets of the problems in the sub-prime market are likely to be contained’. Later in June he again re-iterated that there was not a strong chance of a spill-over into …

Read More →
  1. Pages:
  3. 1
  4. ...
  5. 90
  6. 91
  7. 92
  8. 93
  9. 94
  10. 95
  11. 96
  12. 97