by Hillary LaClair, Senior Editor
March 4, 2009
According to the Irish Times, online poker players applying for mortgages have recently received rejection notices because of their gambling hobby. While online gambling is perfectly legal in Ireland, banks view the hobby “very negatively” and have since used it as a reason to reject loan applications.
Michael Dowling, a spokesperson for the Independent Mortgages Advisers Federation, or IMAF, told the Irish Times that online poker or gambling activity that appears on an applicant’s submission to a bank would not automatically result in a rejection but that it was one of the criteria applied “in a market where they are looking for any excuses” to reject the application.
“The banks will never admit it,” he said, “but it is…being discussed… I don’t think online gambling is to be encouraged if people are making a mortage application, in particular if there are regular amounts going out.”
These financial institutions do not even consider whether or not the applicant wins more than not when gambling, and online poker players who invest as little as Euro 30 per week may be putting their mortgage application at risk. Additionally, the bank does not notify the applicant that the reason for his rejection notice is his online gambling hobby. Rather, the applicant will receive a generic notice that simply states his application does not meet the criteria. “Banks are paying a lot more attention to bank statements now and if they see even Euro 150 going into an online gambling account each month they frown on it,” said Dowling.
With the increasingly popularity of internet gambling, it has been reported that gamers in Ireland lose roughly Euro 100 million each year, that profits the gambling industry and the government which taxes it.
Bank of Ireland has declined to comment on the issue as to whether or not it considered online gambling accounts when reviewing a mortgage application. Ronan Sheridan of AIB said that his bank had no official policy preventing an online poker player from getting a mortgage, but that the bank examined “anything that could impact on an applicant’s ability to repay.”
A spokesperson from popular online gambling website, Paddy Power, told the paper, “Talk about double standards. Irish banks are the biggest gamblers in society.”
Some readers of the article have commented, specifically mentioning that residents playing the stock market are not penalized when applying for a mortgage. “I’m down to almost nothing on bank shares, but up considerably on Blackjack,” said one reader. “Also, unlike the banks, I know when to quit when I’m ahead, so I’m not doubling up the blackjack winnings on Roulette. I’m taking it to FXB’s.”
“Addition of any nature is horrible, that’s not the point,” one reader commented, in response to those defending the banks saying that gambling addictions are worse financially than money spent on other vices. “The point is that for a person on the average wage of Euro 40 a week is not an ‘addiction,’ it’s about twice the price of a bus to and from town five days a week.”
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