Sincerity Rears Its Ugly Head

Ulster Bank said today it was more than happy to pay a hefty banking fine, if that was the price of “making amends for an honest mistake, made in good faith”.

The Central Bank however, said the fine was for a “deliberate strategy” of defrauding customers that caused 29 families to lose their homes. The fraud went unnoticed for quite some time because the target of a traditional bank fraud, is the bank and not the customer.

In recognition of such outside-the-box thinking, the Central Bank initially set ‘an exemplary fine’ of just under €54m. But happily – under ancient bankers’ rules drawn up long, long ago to automatically cut any fines levied on bankers by almost a third – the fine was immediately cut by almost a third.

Ulster Bank observed that settlement of the fine once again demonstrates its “commitment to paying the finest lip service money can buy, to concepts that are – by their very nature! – fundamentally alien to the very idea of commercial banking: concepts like honesty, integrity and trust.”  

An angry bank official later explained that the bank simply couldn’t afford to reveal the names of the officials who organised a huge bank fraud from inside a bank because, “As you very well know, the moment sincerity rears its ugly head, trust goes out the door!”