Business Lending Interest Rate Review

Background to the Business Lending Interest Rate Review

In March 2012, Ulster Bank advised business customers (by letter and press announcement) that it was changing the definition of Cost of Funds, a variable component of the interest rate charged on their accounts, to better reflect the bank’s funding costs.

However, not all customers’ facility documentation allowed for this definition change and therefore should not have had this change applied to their account.  We wrote to all affected customers, other than a small number we were unable to contact to correct our error. It was subsequently identified that the pre 2012 Cost of Funds interest rate used to calculate refunds, and that was charged to impacted customers whose accounts had been remediated, was not rounded down to the nearest one twentieth of one per cent as it should have been. 

This meant that refunds we paid may have been smaller than they should have been and we may have charged too much interest since then.

We started writing to impacted customers in September 2022 to pay further refunds.

We corrected the interest rates for any impacted accounts that were still open on 6 January 2022.

June 2023 - Update

We have remediated all affected customers other than a small number of customers we have been unable to contact. We will continue to try to reach these customers by letter and telephone, but if you think you may have been affected by our errors and have not received a letter from us, please contact our dedicated helpline. Details are outlined in the "Need more information?" section below.