We have just found out that the EC have approved Bank of Ireland in keeping New Ireland assurance but that ICS must be sold and they are to stop accepting [glossary id=’6898′ slug=’mortgage’ /] applications with immediate effect.

We don’t actually know what this means at present, we have not been informed of how they will deal with pipeline applications, applications that are on the system and approved but not offered, or that are awaiting approval.

We have been told that it will be ‘business as usual’ but it may not be,we heard this line before from INBS and others, and if not this is going to cause quite a nightmare for many people and some them will be our clients.

This is out of our control, and not something we had a contingency plan for, but unlike the norm in Irish finance we are not going to wash our hands of it and say ‘not our fault’, this isn’t about blame, this is about Irish Mortgage Brokers doing a great job for every client we represent, and that isn’t going to change. We won’t see our clients suffer as a result of things that are beyond the scope of what they were signing up for when they enlisted a broker.

We will be here to serve you, we will place your loans elsewhere if necessary and we will push ICS in every way we can to get your loans closed, we won’t reduce the quality of our service although we may not be as easily reached during what may be a very busy time if things change drastically. We won’t abandon our clients, we won’t charge more, we won’t do anything other than get through this with you to the best of our ability with the minimum fuss.

It’s the same thing we have always done, we just never needed to announce it before.