Onside | Page 6

ONSIDE / BANKING Q & A A CALL TO ACTION Seneca’s Tim Murphy has been at the forefront of the battle between businesses and banks. He tells Michael Taylor that politicians and regulators could and should be doing so much more. Q: Are businesses still suffering from the effects of being mis-sold swaps and other hedging products? Tim Murphy, Seneca Banking Consultants 6 A: To keep it simple we’ll use “swap” to describe all mis-sold Interest Rate Hedging Products. Undoubtedly, the banks have been very effective in restricting access to compensation for the majority of businesses affected by mis-sold swaps. They have achieved this by excluding certain products, such as Fixed Rate Tailored Business Loans from the agreed compensation scheme and also limiting access to the scheme for companies over a certain size. Without going into too much detail here, companies with turnover over £6.5 million will struggle accessing the agreed scheme and will probably need to litigate. Within the scheme itself the banks have taken a hard line towards settling claims and have routinely accepted they have mis-sold a product only to offer a similar product as part of the proposed compensation, thereby reducing the amount of cash they need to pay out. In