Pepper Advantage Ireland, a prominent provider of mortgage services for numerous investment funds that purchased loans in the aftermath of the economic downturn, has appointed an erstwhile banker with Anglo Irish Bank as the incoming chief executive. Niall Sorohan is currently serving as the chief executive of Cabot Ireland, a company specialised in the collection of consumer debts, and is expected to assume his new position at the onset of 2025.
Sorohan is set to replace Cormac Ryan, who, last May, revealed his plan of resigning from his post as the leader of Pepper Advantage Ireland due to personal grounds after serving the company for seven years. The firm presently embraces 600 employees across its Shannon and Dublin establishments.
Fraser Gemmell, the current chief executive of Pepper Advantage Group, situated in London and handling $55 billion (€50.5 billion) of loan assets on a global scale, acclaimed Sorohan as “an executive of remarkable capacity”.
The past few years have seen this leadership transformation at Pepper, a company that manages around 130,000 mortgage accounts and once made news for applying some of the heftiest mortgage rates in Ireland, consequent to the European Central Bank (ECB) escalating its primary lending rate from zero to 4.5% within a period of 15 months lasting till the previous September. The ECB decreased its rate by 0.25% a short time ago.
Pepper imposes regular variable interest rates that can reach up to 9% on the behalf of the actual holders of the mortgage portfolios under its administration. Many of the debtors are deemed as ‘mortgage prisoners’. due to their poor credit scores dissuading refinancing options.
Notwithstanding, pepper is not known to offer fixed-rate products as a general practice. Yet, in several instances involving insolvent borrowers who have obtained a debt restructural agreement, Irish courts have compelled the company to apply fixed low rates.
The company also revealed a novel alternative repayment arrangement strategy last year targeted at clients facing financial hardship, whereby the interest rate would be fixed at a discounted rate for a mutually agreed period spanning up to two years.
Sorohan joined Anglo Irish Bank in 2001, acting as an associate director for the bank’s UK and European lending teams from 2006 to 2010. His role escalated to heading the bank’s operations in Ireland from 2010 to 2013 after its nationalisation in 2009. Anglo Irish Bank was given the new moniker of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation in 2011 and was liquidated two years later. Sorohan’s association with Cabot has exceeded a decade.
The most recent financial reports for Pepper Finance Corporation (Ireland), the firm operating Pepper Advantage Ireland, indicate a drop in pretax profits of €11.8 million in 2022, from nearly €14 million in the prior year. This happened in spite of revenue growth to €59.1 million, up from €54.5 million in the previous year. The period saw an uptick in the company’s administrative expenses by close to €7 million, reaching €48.6 million, along with an increase in payroll costs of €4 million, amounting to just shy of €35 million.