Colm Kincaid: Opening statement - joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach
Opening statement by Mr Colm Kincaid, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, before the Joint Oireachtas (National Parliament) Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach (Head of Parliament), Dublin, 18 March 2026.
Go raibh maith agat a Chathaoirligh agus gabhaim buíochas leis an gcoiste as ucht an cuireadh a bheith anseo inniú. I am joined by my colleagues Domhnall Cullinan, Director of Banking and Payments, and Aisling Menton, Head of Retail Credit and we welcome the opportunity to continue this important discussion on the role of non-bank entities in the Irish mortgage market.
As outlined in updated figures we published last week and have shared with the Committee the Irish (PDH) residential mortgage market comprises 698,445 loan accounts provided by a range of competing firms – banks (85.1%), non-bank lenders (5.3%) and firms who service existing mortgages but do not themselves lend, who I will call 'non-lending firms' (9.6%).
Each of these firms, and firm types, bring particular features and options to our market. A key difference between banks and non-bank lenders is that whereas banks have access to deposits to fund lending, non-banks tend to access their funding in wholesale markets. This can make non-bank lenders more agile in their pricing options at certain times in the cycle but also more sensitive than banks to swings in wholesale funding rates. Accordingly, bank and non-bank lenders can (at any point in the cycle) bring different competing mortgage options to the market.
Non-lending firms provide specialist services with respect to existing loans, typically (though not exclusively) mortgages in arrears. Consistent with their focus on arrears, non-lending firms tend to have the widest suite of Alternative Repayment Arrangements for mortgages in arrears and specialist expertise in handling and resolving arrears.
All of this lending and servicing activity is subject to Irish financial consumer protection legislation, supervision by Central Bank of Ireland and consumer access to the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman (FSPO). A key aspect of the Irish framework (which is not the case in all other jurisdictions) is that these regulatory protections apply to the mortgage regardless of who owns the loan over its term.