Goldman Sachs hiring staff as bank explores entering Irish market

Bank confirms it is 'exploring bringing our award-winning Marcus deposits business to Ireland'

Goldman Sachs signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The group is assessing the viability of launching its Marcus consumer business in Ireland. Picture: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

Goldman Sachs Group has begun hiring staff to assess the viability of launching its Marcus consumer business in Dublin, edging the Wall Street giant closer to an Irish debut that could unlock billions of euro in cheap funding.

Job ads on LinkedIn show that Goldman is hiring for a handful of roles in Ireland, including specialists to “focus on its consumer deposits business and regulatory interactions” in the country.

Bloomberg reported last year that Goldman was in talks with regulators about an Irish launch for Marcus, the digital retail bank which has amassed more than $100bn (€87.68bn) of deposits across the US and UK since its 2016 debut in high yielding savings accounts.

The move would be Goldman’s first into consumer banking in the European Union, and comes after JPMorgan Chase tapped its first EU consumer market last month with the launch of the Chase digital bank in Germany.

“We are exploring bringing our award-winning Marcus deposits business to Ireland. We have no set timeline and are making select hires to assess the product fit and determine our path forward,” Nick Carcaterra, a Goldman Sachs spokesperson told Bloomberg.

Goldman has a banking licence in Frankfurt, which enables it to offer services across the EU.

Irish market untapped potential

The bank has long eyed Ireland as a possible market for Marcus, since it offers access to cheap retail deposits that can be used to fund EU-wide activity. It is also a relatively uncompetitive market, after the crisis-era exits of international lenders including NatWest through Ulster Bank, and KBC Group.

Irish households are among Europe’s top deposit hoarders, with around €220bn in bank deposits or hard currency, according to latest figures from the Central Bank of Ireland. Much of this sits on low-yielding deposit accounts from domestic banks, with interest rates as low as 0.1%.

Marcus offers promotional rates of 3.75% for its on-demand account in the UK.

A steady stream of new fintech entrants have flocked to the Irish market in recent years, including the April launch of the UK’s digital lender Monzo, which offers a rate of 1.8% on its instant access savings account. Fintech Revolut has also grown strongly, attracting 3.4m customers in a market with a population of just 5.3 million people.

Still, analysts have warned in the past that Irish savers are reluctant to switch from the country’s dominant players, Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland, and Permanent TSB, even if newcomers and fintech offer better value. In April, Permanent TSB accepted a proposed €1.6bn sale of the bank to Austrian banking group Bawag.

While Goldman pared back its consumer banking ambitions under a revamp that began in 2022, including announcing the end of its Apple-branded credit card, the bank remains committed to Marcus for deposit-gathering.

Euro deposits have been increasingly attractive to US banks since Brexit, because some activity has moved from the UK to the EU, where it is more likely to be denominated in euro.

Employment in international banks in Ireland is up by over 20% in the last year, with almost 17,700 people employed, with further growth expected, a report published by the Federation of International Banks in Ireland (FIBI) said last week.

Bloomberg

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