The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is set to publish their final ruling on whether Spanish mortgages which have or which had their interest rates set & calculated based on the IRPH index (Índice de Referencia de Préstamos Hipotecarios) are to be deemed abusive. These mortgages could then be deemed unfair, untransparent and therefore an abuse of the consumer.
mortgage interest rates
The Mortgage Loan Reference Index
Our next feature in our series regarding claims against Spanish banks is mortgage interest rates calculated against the IRPH or The Mortgage Loan Reference Index, which was an alternative to the Euribor and is basically another reference for calculation of the mortgage interests. IRPH was sold to the public as a stable and less volatile alternative to Euribor, but resulted to be entirely controlled by the bank entities themselves, being an even more expensive one for customers than the Euribor index. Although, in some sense it is stable: it has always been several points higher than the Euribor and given today’s Euribor historical lows, IRPH is extremely expensive. As an Index it is never fixed, so it should have never been sold as a more stable index than other alternatives.
