According to World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2019, financial market development in Ireland is scored 68.8 out of maximum 100.0 and ranked 42nd out of 144 analysed economies.
Chart 1. Financial Market Development in Ireland. Source: WEF.
Soundness of banks is scored 4.4 bringing Ireland into the 98th place.
Chart 2. Soundness of Banks in Ireland. Source: WEF.
Banks in Ireland are mainly focused on the following areas:
Currently there are 338 credit institutions operating in Ireland.
In 2019 consolidated banking assets in Ireland were 523.28 bln EUR. The consolidated banking assets' evolution is shown at Chart 3 below.
Chart 3. Consolidated banking assets in Ireland.
Recent structural changes (2013 - 2018) of the banking sector of Ireland are summarised in Table 1.
| 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of Opened Banks | 1 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 |
| Number of Closed Banks | 7 | 14 | 32 | 44 | 25 | 14 |
Table 1. Recent structural changes in the banking sector of Ireland.
The list of the most recently opened banks in Ireland is provided in Table 2.
| Name | Start Date |
|---|---|
| J.P. Morgan Bank Luxembourg S.A., Dublin branch | December 2018 |
 Bank Julius Baer Europe S.A. | December 2018 |
| Sparkasse Bank Malta plc | April 2018 |
 Crédit Suisse (Luxembourg) SA | January 2018 |
 Close Brothers Limited | December 2017 |
 Bank of China (UK) Limited | July 2017 |
 Caceis Bank | January 2017 |
 Fca Bank S.p.a. | January 2017 |
 Opel Bank GmbH | November 2016 |
 LGT Bank AG | November 2016 |
Table 2. The most recently opened banks in Ireland.
All the credit institutions operating in Ireland can be classified into several categories. Table 3 summarises the number of banks in each category.
| Category | Number of Banks |
|---|---|
| Banks | 28 |
| Branches of foreign banks | 38 |
| Central banks | 1 |
| Credit unions | 271 |
Table 3. Number of banks by category in Ireland.
There are 38 branches of foreign banks from 13 different countries in Ireland. Table 4 shows 10 countries having the biggest number of branches in Ireland.
| Country of Origin | Number of Branches |
|---|---|
 United Kingdom | 8 |
 France | 7 |
 Luxembourg | 6 |
 Germany | 4 |
 Netherlands | 4 |
 Belgium | 2 |
 Switzerland | 1 |
 Liechtenstein | 1 |
 Italy | 1 |
 Malta | 1 |
Table 4. Number of branches of foreign banks in Ireland grouped by country of origin.
Deposit guarantee scheme is a financial stability mechanism implemented in many countries to protect bank depositors against the loss of their deposits in the case when a bank is unable to meet its obligations to depositors by compensating certain deposits held by depositors of the bank. This compensation is paid out from the contributions which banks have made into a deposit guarantee fund.
From a depositor's point of view it is important to know:
All these details about deposit guarantee scheme in Ireland are summarised in Table 5.
Table 5. Deposit guarantee scheme in Ireland.
EEA stands for European Economic Area and consists of all EU member states plus Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland.
Moody's country ceilings for deposits specify the highest rating that can be assigned to local- or foreign- currency denominated deposit obligations of a bank or other deposit taking institution domiciled within that country.
Local currency (Euro) deposit ceiling for Ireland is set to Aaa (prime), foreign currency deposit ceiling is Aaa (prime).
