The Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority (Ifsra) is liaising with financial institutions on a series of cases that may lead to customers being reimbursed for money that was wrongly charged. Dominic Coyle reports.

However, it has no immediate intention of notifying the public of the companies concerned and the issues involved.

Ifsra was this week forced to concede that French insurance giant Axa had been systematically refusing to refund customers small amounts they may have overpaid for a period of 13 years. Axa is one of the largest players in the Irish general insurance market, particularly in motor insurance.

Details of the case emerged only when one customer contacted the media after receiving a letter from Axa acknowledging the mistake - which had been a matter of company policy - and arranging details for repayment.

Those letters were apparently sent to customers in January.

However, Ifsra, which has conducted and published surveys informing the public of where they can find best value in a range of financial services, has taken no steps to inform the public that a leading insurer had been taking small sums of money from customers with no authority over an extended period.

An Ifsra spokeswoman said that details of such investigations were likely to appear in the regulator's annual report - but only when they were completed.

She noted that the regulator's "initial concern is to ensure that those customers affected get the money they are owed".

Ifsra was also concerned to ensure financial institutions carried out their roles properly and in a transparent fashion in correcting errors, she said.

The Ifsra annual report is published in July but will only address issues concluded in 2004. On that basis, Ifsra would not have been notifying the public of Axa's €1.7 million overcharging until July 2006, when the 2005 annual report is due to appear.

The spokeswoman was unable to confirm whether publication, even at that stage, would include details of the companies, the number of customers or the sums of money involved on a case-by-case basis.

Ifsra has defended its approach in alerting customers and the general public to financial institutions that are acting improperly.

"There is an awful lot of work going on," said Neil Whoriskey, another spokesman for the regulator.

"There are a number of cases out there at various stages of the process arising post the AIB foreign exchange issue and the subsequent trawl of charging issues that we requested the institutions to undertake."

He said that Ifsra was also using its power to inspect the operations of institutions.