We hope that you have all had a great festive period and are looking forward to having a fantastic start to the new decade as much as we are at Fluent Finance Abroad. As we begin a new decade, we also see the beginning of a new era within Spanish mortgage lending, and while we all welcome changes which are better in the long term, it does inevitably come at the price of a period of pain whilst the changes are interpreted and adopted by the banks.
Mortgages in Spain
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.
Miss-selling Claims against Spanish Banks – Could they really be liable for EURO 33 billion worth of claims?
You may or may not be aware but Spanish lenders have been taken to task since the country’s banking and construction industries nearly collapsed as a consequence of the global credit crisis.
Such was the ferocity of the banks actions, that after mass public demonstrations in 2012, law makers in Spain brought in new rules to help protect borrowers and make it harder for lenders to evict (desahuciar) people from their homes.
