When IIB launched their sub-prime lender ‘Stepstone’ the plan was for them to be the inverse of what The Monkeys sang about, they would be your ‘stepping stone’ towards financial stability, they looked specifically at clients who were recently self employed and therefore wouldn’t have 3 years of accounts, people who wanted to refinance who may have had arrears, and other standard specialist lending clients.
Now Stepstonehave joined the slowly (but disturbing) list of Irish Banks to close their doors for business. This means that the Irish financial industry will have to face up to the reality of unsteady world money markets in an ever more local perspective, it’s no longer happening ‘over there in the US’ or ‘across the water’ anywhere else, its up close and personal, especially for the people who were made redundant this week. I feel bad for them, they all did a great job and they were certainly not behind the decision to close up shop, it will also decrease competition in the industry as the number of …