Pepper Homeloans seen spicing up Irish mortgage market

The entry of Pepper Homeloans is good news but will fail to loosen to any significant extent the grip Bank of Ireland and AIB holds over the Irish mortgage market, a leading mortgage expert has said.

Pepper – an Australian finance giant -- becomes the first major new home loans entrant here since the financial crash sent mortgage lending into a tailspin and pushed many home owners deep into negative equity paying mortgages they could no longer afford.

At around €4.5bn, the amount of annual new lending advanced by a shrunken roster of mortgage lenders is now a fraction of the level of loans advanced during the boom years.