Interest Rate Swap Products

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) on his very powerful opening of this debate.

I wish to raise the specific case of London and Westcountry Estates Ltd, a company that owns several business parks all over the south-west and is now in administration as a direct result, I believe, of the Royal Bank of Scotland imposing on it an interest swap arrangement that was never right for its business. In brief, the background is as follows. For many years, London and Westcountry had been a premier customer of RBS. Its directors were encouraged by the bank to expand. For example, in 2006 RBS approached London and Westcountry and encouraged it to add to its portfolio a large business park in Bridgwater, and it lent the company 100% of the finance required.

In July 2008, after the banks had caused the credit crunch, RBS insisted that if the company wished to have its borrowing facility renewed, it must enter into a swap arrangement on the basis of an alleged imminent threat of rising interest rates. In fact, independent analysis has demonstrated that even in July 2008 bank insiders did not really believe that to be true; it was simply a way of selling a product to make a profit on which huge bonuses were paid.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Is it not time for the Financial Services Authority to use its teeth to put a lot of this right? Banks have abused people’s trust and forced them into these deals as a way of creating higher interest rates for their customers, whereas we want lower interest rates.

[Mr Streeter]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Thousands of people in this country, dozens of whom are in the Gallery, are looking to the FSA to put right some of the terrible wrongs that have been done in the past few years.

It turned out that the company of which I speak had been persuaded to enter into a swap arrangement for 10 years at a fixed rate of 6.4%. Although it had been told that the deal contained a break clause after three years, it transpired that that enabled only the bank to withdraw and not the customer. The company later learned that breaking the swap arrangement would incur a penalty that seemed to fluctuate on a daily basis but would total millions of pounds. This was not known to it at the time of signing the agreement. The way in which the swap was sold patently breached the terms of the financial regulations surrounding such transactions, as other hon. Members have said.

Interest rates subsequently plummeted in a way that nobody had forecast. We all know that if companies enter into a bad bargain, that is something they have to accept, but this was not just a bad bargain: the company was mis-sold the hedging product to further the interests of the bank, not the customer, and the detailed and complex terms were never fully explained to or understood by the directors of the company.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish]

Does my hon. Friend think that, in many cases, bank head offices put huge pressure on local managers to sell these products, which local managers actually have no knowledge about?

[Heather Wheeler]

That is becoming clearer and clearer as this debate goes on and as more and more constituents come out and tell us their stories.

Two advisers visited my constituent and went through all the advantages of an IRSA, but they did not mention any possible downsides or advise him to take specialist independent advice about the IRSA. He was also told that he could not get a loan if he did not take out the IRSA, giving my constituent very little choice over the matter and putting him under considerable pressure to accept. It has since become apparent to him that the so-called advisers were just sales people from the bank set on selling him this product, regardless of any consequence to himself or his business.

To my constituent’s knowledge, he having researched the matter, only two companies in the UK at the time were qualified to give advice, but both belonged to large City firms that would have been beyond his budget. My constituent is now left with a product that will have cost him £200,000 by the end of this year alone. I think we would agree that this is a considerable sum for a garden centre. He has had to make several redundancies, as well as personal sacrifices, to remain solvent, and his business is clearly feeling the ramifications; the turnover, which was £2.2 million at the time, has dropped, with the marketplace as it is, to below £2 million.

Furthermore, it is evident that banks are not taking claims of mis-selling seriously. Another constituent of mine, the owner of a motorcycle company, has had a long banking relationship with Lloyds. In fact, they used to use Lloyds to buy stock rather than property, and had loans from it for many, many years. It was important that they had this strong relationship with their bank, yet, since they fell into the trap of buying an IRSA, incurring huge costs, the bank appears to have little interest in dealing with the matter satisfactorily. In February, my constituent’s solicitor sent a letter of claim to Lloyds; it is now June and he is still waiting for a reply.

The situation needs investigating further. Constituents have written to me on this issue about three of the top banks—NatWest, RBS and Lloyds TSB—so the situation is far-reaching and needs to be dealt with. These heavyweight banks are effectively taking advantage of small business owners’ lack of financial expertise, bombarding them with the idea that they must enter into such agreements to get a loan. Indeed, this could be one of the biggest financial scandals to come to light since PPI. The agreements need to be made more transparent, so that people are fully aware that such products have significant break costs and are viewed as separate from the loans that the individuals concerned originally wanted to take out.

I urge the Minister to take steps wherever possible to support small and medium-sized enterprises and to ensure that where there is widespread misconduct against them, as in my constituency of South Derbyshire, appropriate action is taken to support them. I look forward to hearing her concluding remarks and hope that she will take my constituents’ cases on board.