Another successful bank mediation was conducted by the accredited mediator Anna Korsanou. This is a case of a husband and wife, co-borrowers with a home loan at Eurobank-Bank a greek bank . The preparation of the mediation took several months and the borrowers’ lawyer had a key role in communicating with the Bank as well as sending over financial data.
The mediation was conducted in the presence of the borrowers, the Bank’s representatives, their lawyers and the mediator, Anna Korsanou. The process was initiated with a common meeting between the parties and was followed by a meeting conducted separately between the parties and the mediator, in order to achieve an agreement which did not include a loan write-off, it must be noted that although the criteria used by the Bank are not set out here, the financial data, the borrowers’ age, the Bank’s claim guarantees and the remaining loan term were taken into account. Finally, the parties agreed to a monthly installment within the limits of the borrower’s financial capacity.
The borrowers’ typical thought, that is being described here with their consent, was that when they initially signed the loan, the agreement provided for a low installment which would later be subject to an increase. At the time they had not read the loan contract, therefore they did not realize that the installment was going to increase. When the years passed and they were asked to pay a higher installment and as a result of the financial difficulties Greek society had to deal with, in combination with the borrowers’ own family problems which occurred and made them work at an advanced age, they found themselves in a dead-end situation.
More specifically, they regretted that, upon signing of the loan contract, they were not accompanied by a lawyer who would have warned them about the later increase of the installment. Unfortunately, they became aware of this fact at a late hour and this time they asked for the contribution of a lawyer and mediator in order to proceed to the loan negotiation, thinking that the experienced senior executives of the Bank’s mediation department, in combination with a thorough loan negotiation, would produce better results than visiting a bank branch alone, depending on the help of a bank officer who would not take their case too seriously. For this reason they resorted to mediation, through which they achieved a positive agreement.
