Núa Money, the newest mortgage lender in the State, has begun to market a refinancing of €300 million of home loans in the bond market in the first deal of its kind for the company, according to sources.
The value of loans being refinanced equate to about 2.2 per cent of the total €13.5 billion of mortgage lending carried out in the Irish market in the 12 months to the end of June, Núa’s first year in operation.
The loans – which are being refinanced through a process called securitisation – are believed to account for most of the mortgages that have been drawn down by Núa customers. It started with a soft launch in July 2024 before building momentum.
Representatives for the company declined to comment on the size of lending by Núa to date. Barclays is managing the securitisation. The loans have been packaged in a special purpose vehicle called Beckett Mortgages 2025-1 DAC, according to a report on the deal written by debt ratings agency DBRS Morningstar.
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Some 16.1 per cent of the loans are to self-employed borrowers, with the remainder out to employed individuals or couples, it said. The average loan is almost €283,000, has more than 26 years to run, equates to 70.6 per cent of the value of the underlying property, and the borrower is paying an interest rate of 4.6 per cent, it added.
Some 11.4 per cent of the loans involve an element of equity release, while a further 4 per cent relate to debt consolidation by borrowers.
Núa is led by chief executive Mark Watson, who previously led Maltese bank MeDirect. Its chief commercial officer is Irish bond market veteran Fergal O’Leary. It is backed by the Allen beef barons of Wexford.
Non-bank lenders have begun to re-emerge from the sidelines over the past 15 months, having been squeezed over the previous 18 months as the price of wholesale and bond market funding spiralled as central banks hiked interest rates. The European Central Bank has cut rates a number of times since last June.
Still, the three mainstream Irish banks – AIB, Bank of Ireland and PTSB – and Avant Money, now a branch of its Spanish banking parent Bankinter, accounted for 99.5 per cent of mortgages issued in 2024 – helped by their cheap deposit funding.
ICS Mortgages, owned by Dilosk, rebooted its owner-occupier mortgage offering last year, easing what were then the most stringent lending criteria in the market and gradually lowering its interest rates, as international funding conditions eased. MoCo, a non-bank lender, but owned by Austrian bank Bawag, launched early last year.
While non-banks had largely competed on price before the spike in interest rates, this time around they’re vying for customers on product and service.
