Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 5 November 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform

Overview of Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland

4:15 pm

Mr. Richie Boucher:

There are very different features. In particular, in a lot of European markets there are state-sponsored and taxpayer subsidised bond schemes such as in the internal Pfandbriefe bond market in Germany. Similar schemes are operated in the United States - the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac schemes. Our contiguous market with the same structures, in particular in terms of access to bond markets, loss experiences, etc., is the United Kingdom where there are equivalent broad spreads. It has a different currency, but the base rates are not and do not look a lot different. Let us look at the pricing of all of our products. Our net interest margin is 2.08%.