Goldman Sachs Considering Expanding Retail Bank Into Ireland and Germany

Goldman Sachs Group is reportedly considering expanding its retail bank, Marcus, to Ireland and Germany.

The company has held early-stage discussions with Irish regulators and is taking another look at Germany, where it once planned to launch in 2019, Bloomberg reported Tuesday (May 13), citing unnamed sources.

“Our award-winning Marcus deposits platform delivers high levels of customer satisfaction and continues to provide easy-to-use competitive options for customers looking to grow their savings,” Nick Carcaterra, Goldman Sachs spokesperson, said in a statement to PYMNTS. “We remain focused on that business in the U.S. and U.K. and are exploring our options for future growth areas.”

Ireland is seen as an opportunity for Marcus because the country has only three major banks and a few FinTechs, and household deposits earn lower average interest than those in the euro area as a whole, according to the Bloomberg report.

Goldman is looking to expand because the U.K. has a cap on how much it can raise from depositors before it can no longer use their cash to fund its investment bank, the report said.

However, there have been some calls to remove that cap. If that rule were to be eliminated, and Goldman could raise as much as it wanted in the U.K., the company would be less likely to expand to other European countries, per the report.

It was reported in May 2019 that Goldman Sachs decided to delay the German launch of Marcus, which it had announced a year earlier, because a rush to launch the consumer bank in the country would have been expensive.

Goldman Sachs said in January that it created a Capital Solutions Group to bring together its financing, origination, structuring and risk management solutions in its Global Banking & Markets business, and that it would expand the alternatives investment team in its Asset & Wealth Management business.

The company said both moves were meant to enhance its ability to serve corporate and investor clients and grow its business in private credit.

“Our strategy and core franchise strengths position Goldman Sachs to operate at the fulcrum of one of the most important structural trends taking place in finance: the emergence and growth of private credit and other asset classes that can be privately deployed,” Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon said at the time in a press release.