We are delighted to see a new mortgage lender entering the Irish mortgage market to provide homeloans (rather than to merely service other loans that are being sold).

Pepper started out here as a mortgage servicing company, so when a bank wanted a company to manage their loans they’d get a third party like Pepper to take care of that for them, but they were also a lender in other jurisdictions they operate in (like Australia).

To that end they have started up here too. We were contacted by and consulted with Pepper for a long time prior to this and thought that it would still be some time before they would launch, but they got their operations up and running and that makes them the first new entrant in the Irish mortgage market since before the crash (that will actually be lending money to people to buy homes).

They have also looked at a few niches the incumbent Irish banks haven’t been servicing, so there are options there for the self employed, or for people who might not have the kind of work history an Irish bank demands.

This is a big leap forward because while we say ‘we love our entrepreneurs’ and there are banks advertising how they’ll ‘back business’ in truth, they often don’t because they then won’t lend to the same people in order for them to buy a home.

There is also a choice there for people with bad credit history. Again, this is a group who up until now were locked in place by the existing Irish banking system. Pepper should be commended for increasing the breadth of the market as well as for being competitive in the process.

We look forward to seeing Pepper Mortgages ‘spice up’ the competition (terrible pun but we write technical pieces not comedy!)