Revolut is now expected to hold off its eagerly anticipated Irish mortgages launch until 2026, even though it has been quietly testing its planned offering with staff in the Republic in recent months.
Executives from the neobank told The Irish Times in April that they were planning for an Irish launch in the fourth quarter of this year.
However, sources say that the group is continuing to focus, for now, on the Lithuanian market, home of its existing euro-zone banking licence, where it unveiled its first mortgage product in May.
Revolut is doubling down on further improving its mortgage product in that market before rolling it out elsewhere, the sources added, declining to comment on timing of an official Irish start.
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A spokesman for Revolut declined to comment when asked about the timing of the mortgages launch in the Republic.
The company has focused on the switcher market in Lithuania to date, taking advantage of regulatory changes in that market in February that have made it easier for borrowers to refinance mortgages with other lenders.
Revolut is currently making mortgages available directly through its app in Lithuania, with its loan rate linked to a key European benchmark – the so-called Euribor rate at which banks are willing to lend to each other in the euro zone.
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Avant Money launched a similar product in the Irish market earlier this year. It has echoes of the European Central Bank (ECB) tracker mortgages that were prevalent in the Republic before the financial crisis. Lenders stopped offering these in 2008, when their own borrowing costs spiralled and lost any correlation with ECB rates. The rate on the Avant product is set on the day of drawdown and adjusted annually based on the 12-month Euribor market rates.
Sources cautioned that Revolut’s mortgage distribution and product in Lithuania should not be seen as a precedent for its Irish offering.
While about 45 per cent of Irish home loans are written through brokers, they are much less of a feature in the Baltic state. Meanwhile, loans linked to Euribor are standard in Lithuania.
Revolut’s more than three million customers in Ireland will present a big opportunity to market its mortgage offering and take on the three Irish banks that accounted for 92 per cent of €12.6 billion of mortgages issued last year.
Still, Béatrice Cossa-Dumurgier, chief executive of Revolut’s new western Europe hub in Paris, told the Business Post in September that mortgages are “not a product that we’re going to push very aggressively” when they are launched in Ireland. She declined at that stage to be drawn on timelines, saying that “there is no hurry”.
The Irish operation will ultimately fall under the western European unit, subject to the latter securing a French banking licence.
Others also trying to loosen the banks’ stranglehold on mortgages include Avant Money, ICS Mortgages, which has become more active in the last year, and new entrants Nuá Money and MoCo. MoCo, which is owned by Austrian banking group Bawag, recently expanded into savings products, while Avant Money, a unit of Spain’s Bankinter, is eyeing an imminent launch of deposit accounts.
Meanwhile, the future ownership of PTSB, the State’s third-largest mortgage lender, is uncertain, after the bank announced it was putting itself up for sale earlier this month.
PTSB is currently trying to convince the Central Bank to allow it to lower the amount of expensive capital it needs to hold in reserve against its home loans – to put it on a more competitive footing with its larger rivals, AIB and Bank of Ireland. A new owner will benefit from an expected capital alleviation.
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