Avant Money’s loan book grew by 23 per cent to €4 billion in the 12 months to the end of March, just before the lender here became a branch of its Spanish banking parent, Bankinter.
The company’s mortgage book increased by 24 per cent to €3 billion, while its consumer credit portfolio expanded by 15 per cent, Bankinter said in an investor presentation on Thursday as it reported quarterly figures.
Net interest income at Avant rose by 11 per cent to €27 million, while pretax profits jumped 18 per cent to €11 million.
Avant Money, led by chief executive Niall Corbett, officially became a branch of Bankinter at the start of April. It plans to initially focus on expanding its product range this year to deposits.
Bankinter chief executive Gloria Oritz previously said that she expects Avant Money to gather €100 million-€200 million of deposits in 2025, before growing gradually to a stage where the Irish loan book is almost funded by local deposits within eight years.
Its digital, rather than branch network, strategy means that Avant’s running costs equated to 47.1 per cent of total income, below the typical target of about 50 per cent for a retail banks. However, Bankinter’s ratio was 36.7 per cent.
The wider Bankinter group saw its pretax profit rise 16 per cent in the first quarter to €378 million.
The Spanish banking giant is the first traditional lender from overseas to move to enter the Irish retail banking market since March 2005, when Bank of Scotland moved to buy 52 former ESB shops to set up a boots-on-the-ground banking operation and Copenhagen-based Danske Bank took over National Irish Bank. Bank of Scotland and Danske Ireland would exit Irish retail banking after the crash.
The final two overseas banks in the market, Ulster Bank and KBC Bank Ireland, decided four years ago to wind down gradually.
The market has seen the entrance in recent years of overseas-regulated online banks Revolut and N26, which offer various loan and savings products in the State. Revolut plans to enter the Irish mortgage market this year.
Bankinter, the fifth-largest Spanish bank, entered the Republic in 2019 through the acquisition of AvantCard, a credit card and consumer finance business, from US investment group Apollo.
AvantCard was subsequently renamed Avant Money, which moved into Irish mortgages in late 2020 with headline rates that undercut the cheapest home loans available at the time in the market.
