The average reported loss rose from $80,000 last year to $88,000 this year.<\/p>\n
Complaints related to property lending remained significant, ombudsman Nicola Sladden said. \u201cMany were about interest rates and break fees.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one case dealt with in the year, a man injured his back and couldn\u2019t work, making it hard for him to make his home loan repayments.<\/p>\n
The bank sent him a formal letter of demand to clear the arrears.<\/p>\n
He paid the money and then asked about switching to a fixed-rate loan, which would lower his payments.<\/p>\n
The bank said it would monitor the repayments for 90 days before it considered the request.<\/p>\n
He argued he had previously been told that he could not apply for a fixed rate only when he was actually in arrears.<\/p>\n
He said that had he known this, he would have put the money into renovating his home for a voluntary sale, rather than the forced sale the bank had mentioned.<\/p>\n
The ombudsman\u2019s case note said he got in touch with the bank several times before eventually losing his temper and becoming abusive to staff.<\/p>\n
The bank told him it would close his accounts.<\/p>\n
He complained to the ombudsman scheme that he had been treated unfairly.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven [his] language and tone, the bank\u2019s decision to close his accounts was reasonable. However, [his] history of arrears meant he would have difficulty finding another bank for his home loan, so we suggested the bank offer to put $4000 towards renovating [his] home in preparation for its sale, with any leftover money going towards his arrears,\u201d the case note said.<\/p>\n
The bank also offered to make a payment of $500 and allowed him to make a small weekly payment to slow his growing arrears. The man accepted the offer.<\/p>\n
Sladden said it highlighted the importance of communication when customers got into difficulties.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though most banks have specialist hardship teams to deal with such customers, there are still opportunities for them to improve their processes, particularly how they communicate their decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis outcome [gave] the customer the chance to avoid a mortgagee sale, and it also clearly demonstrated the benefits of taking a collaborative and flexible approach towards a customer in financial difficulty.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said customers facing difficulty should contact their banks as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs customers\u2019 financial difficulties deepen, the fewer options a bank has to help. For their part, banks should have a straightforward process for responding to customers who reach out for help.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The average reported loss rose from $80,000 last year to $88,000 this year. Complaints related to property lending…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[36714,806,1643,36715,138,813,6119,679,5838,111,139,69,8617,2873,1133,812,61,102],"class_list":{"0":"post-40575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-36714","9":"tag-as","10":"tag-bank","11":"tag-borrower","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-edmunds","14":"tag-faces","15":"tag-forced","16":"tag-help","17":"tag-new-zealand","18":"tag-newzealand","19":"tag-nz","20":"tag-offers","21":"tag-renovations","22":"tag-sale","23":"tag-susan","24":"tag-to","25":"tag-with"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}