The Irish Times has reported today that several financial institutions that are having their (bad) loans transferred to NAMA are asking for the state agency to reduce the amount of documents and data required for the transfer to be processed. As it stands at the moment, the institutions are requested to provide over 1,000 pieces of info for each loan facility (The Irish Times, 24/03/10), including key valuation data. The amount of paperwork to be produced is quite huge, and some lending institutions have expressed a concern with the time and staff that it takes to collect the information and to report back to NAMA in order for the loan to be transferred to the state agency’s portfolio. What makes the gathering of data even more complex is the fact that many of the required information were not on the original loans’ paperwork. This is maybe for this very reason that the financial institutions’ request to cut the amount of data required by NAMA and to fast-track the transfer of their loans to the state agency comes as a bit of a surprise: didn’t we end up in this situation as the result of a lack of rigor, proper procedures, and transparency in the lending process by the very financial institutions that are asking for a sped-up (expedited?) process?
Delphine Ancien
Ireland after NAMA 
February 24, 2010 at 3:50 pm
I think this makes stronger the case for a review of NAMA’s modus operandum and valuation methodologies after the first tranche are transferred as maybe the extra data isn’t necessary. I think there should still be huge concern that 1/5th of the total NAMA loans will be transferred in the first tranche whilst so much uncertainty clouds the market.
February 25, 2010 at 5:03 am
The whole point of NAMA as conceived by Brian, is that it is a black hole where bad loans go to slowly become good through the passage of time and at whatever cost, but to hopefully not remove any more of the bubble value from the economy, as voters may see that as a bad thing.
The calls may gather momentum then! The Revenue commissioners were supposedly independent, but if they ever exercised that independence then a political problem might arise. Hence no requests were ever made for more powers, tax offences etc unless they had been told to do so by Finance.
The same process here. When examining bank accounts of individualks who had been allowed say 400 seperate deposit accounts by a manager, there was often no paper work at all. The original funds were even at the one branch, but entries had been made into bank records so that a bank returning details of the interest earned would divide it out amongst as many of the branches as needed to keep inmteres low and not then notify Revenue as the amounts of interest paid were below 70 Pounds. In 1983 the limit was changed to 50 pounds per branch, per account hlder and masses of returns were made as new accounts were too late to apply retrospectively! It is not difficult to “catch” evaders when the harvest is readied in that way.
No documents. The loans being transferred might refer to assets outside of Ireland or inside in other names, possibly aliases. If all the documentation is not inspected, there is a fair chance that some securities that would reduce the bad element of the loans, will disappear. Allowing the borrower to have a wealthy retirement. That is why there is a need for so many records to be transferred. The banks have deceived the Irish authorities for decades. It is only money, what is the fuss? It is not as if ANYONE’S HEALTH IS INVOLVED…..
February 25, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Thanks for this post Delphine. This story in the papers also sparked my own interest. It is clear now that NAMA is to become the definitive ‘Irish solution to an Irish problem’.