Spanish bank Bankinter’s unit in Ireland has begun to inform customers that it will become a fully-fledged branch of the Madrid group from April, in order to be able to expand services here.
Avant Money is currently a nonbank lender, albeit funded by its parent bank, offering mortgages, credit cards and personal loans.
It currently has more than 200,000 customers and initially plans to move into offering deposit accounts with the benefit of coming under a banking licence.
Bankinter has received authorisations from the European Central Bank (ECB) and Spain’s central bank on the plan and has been working closely with the Central Bank of Ireland on the project since the branch plan was announced last April.
The bank will work on an online banking model rather than using the traditional bricks and mortar branch model. It currently has 300 employees, two-thirds of whom are based in Carrick-on-Shannon in Co Leitrim, with the remainder working from Avant Money’s offices in Sandyford Business Park in Dublin.
It will initially continue to operate as a bank branch in the Republic under the Avant Money name, though it is expected to rebrand as Bankinter in time.
“On April 1st, 2025, or shortly afterwards Avant Money will merge into a newly established Irish branch of Bankinter SA,” Avant Money informed credit card and personal loan customers by email on Monday afternoon.
“The legal ownership of all contracts, assets, and liabilities of Avantcard DAC will transfer to the Irish branch of Bankinter.”
[ Bankinter’s Irish mortgage lending share outstrips home market in SpainOpens in new window ]
It is understood that the lender plans to follow up with communications to mortgage borrowers next week.
“Bankinter is authorised by Banco de España [the central bank in Spain] and will be regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland for conduct of business rules. This means you will continue to be protected by all the same rights and protections including those in the Consumer Protection Code and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR),” Avant Money said in the email.
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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 (Ireland) would hand back its licence in 2010, as a result of the financial crash, while Danske Ireland, which had operated as a branch of its Danish parent group, exited the retail market here in 2013.
[ Bankinter’s Irish loans rise 41% amid plans for bank branchOpens in new window ]
The final two overseas banks in the market, Ulster Bank and KBC Bank Ireland, decided four years ago to wind down gradually.
Still, 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 with a €118 billion balance sheet, 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 Avent Money, which moved into Irish mortgages in late 2020 with rates starting at 1.95 per cent for fixed-term products, undercutting the cheapest home loans available at the time in the market.
Avant Money’s mortgage book grew 41 per cent year to €2.7 billion in the 12 months to last September, with new lending for the first nine months of the year rising by 37 per cent to €900 million. Its reported a 12-month share of new Irish home loans production of 8 per cent.
Avant Money’s consumer credit book rose by 18 per cent on the year to €900 million. Net interest income for the first nine months of the year increased by 7 per cent to €73 million, while its pretax profit advanced 12 per cent to €290 million.
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