Welcome to the Irish Banking Culture Board’s (IBCB) 4th Annual Report. 

This past year in the banking sector has been dominated by the huge levels of bank account switching required due to the departure of Ulster Bank and KBC Bank Ireland from the Irish market and by expectations on the banking sector to assist customers as a result of the rapidly rising cost of living. The IBCB has worked closely with our member banks and other industry bodies in relation to these issues and will continue to do so in the period ahead. The last year also saw the conclusion of the Central Bank of Ireland’s Tracker Mortgage Examinations. As noted in our statement issued in September 2022, the IBCB stands with the thousands of bank customers who have been impacted financially and emotionally by this scandal. As a Board, we have sought to learn from the insights we gained through our engagement with customers and staff in relation to this issue, and to use them to identify the priority areas we consider need to be focussed on in our member banks in order to assist them with building a roadmap to the post-tracker period, founded on sustained strategic focus on the lessons that have been learned, and those that continue to require focus.

A key role of the IBCB is to measure trust levels with the public and internal culture within our member banks. We do this through our éist Public Trust in Banking surveys and our éist Staff Culture surveys. These surveys form the basis for our work programme across our two key pillars Customers and Staff. 

During the period we published some key reports:

éist 2022 Public Trust in Banking report – It was clear from the findings published in July 2022 that, while there is some evidence of improvement, more work remains to be done to address deeply ingrained feelings of distrust towards the banking sector amongst the Irish public. 

éist 2022 Proud to work in Banking report – Irish bank staff report lower levels of organisational pride than their peers in other jurisdictions. Over the period we undertook some in depth research on this topic and published this report with the findings in September 2022.

Since the end of the financial period, we have published our éist 2023 Public Trust in Banking report which finds that while banking remains in a state of flux in Ireland, the slow recovery of public trust in the sector continues. We are also due to publish our éist 2023 Staff Culture report in September 2023.

More information on all these reports can be found in the Work Programme section of this report and on our website.

Throughout the financial year we had five member banks and 14 board members. Due to their exit from the Irish market, Ulster Bank ceased its membership of the IBCB at the end of the financial year (March 2023) and KBC Bank Ireland will cease its membership at the end of September 2023. I would like to thank Ulster Bank and KBC Bank Ireland for their support for the IBCB since the outset in 2019 and to wish their staff all the very best for the future. We have also had a number of other Board member changes over the period which are detailed below in the Governance section. I would like to sincerely thank Philip O’Leary, Ger Mitchell, Lavinia Morris, Elizabeth Arnett, and Jim O’Keeffe for their contributions to the board and I wish them all the very best for the future and I look forward to working with the new members of our board. 

I would also like to thank my fellow board members and the staff of the IBCB on their continued commitment to our purpose – to working with our member banks to build trustworthiness with the public.