The CEO of Bankinter, Gloria Ortiz, has downplayed the situation of French public debt, whose ten-year bonds currently exceed 5%, and has assured that she does not consider it "worrisome".
Ortiz has detailed that, although the bulk of the bank's sovereign debt portfolio corresponds to Spanish securities, they also hold French government bonds that, given the current circumstances, she deems appropriate to "monitor", although she has ruled out that they could lead to a problem for the eurozone as a whole.
"We are far from the situation of the financial debt crisis. France is a country with enormous credit capacity, the situation will be redirected when this period of political transition ends. We are convinced that there will be no problems in European public debt beyond the fact that we are in a volatile moment," the company's CEO has specified.
In parallel, the executive has emphasized that Spanish public debt maintains a "very contained premium, below that of France and Italy".
Regarding potential additional increases in interest rates by the European Central Bank (ECB) to continue combating inflation, Ortiz has explained that Bankinter's balance sheet presents a "positive" bias, which, as she indicated, should translate into an increase in interest margins and the customer base in the twelve-month horizon.
However, the bank's top executive has urged caution when analyzing the evolution of this margin in quarterly periods, warning that the exact sensitivity in such short terms is unknown. Between January and September, the entity obtained an interest margin of 1.761 billion euros, 5.68% more, driven by "higher business volumes and good management of the spreads".
New mortgage production
When questioned about the possible impact on clients of a prolonged scenario of high interest rates, Ortiz denied that it would cause "a slowdown" in the contracting of mortgages for home purchases.
In the third quarter, the bank recorded an improvement in new mortgage production compared to previous quarters. In the Spanish market, the entity has managed to moderate the 40% drop recorded in the first quarter to a decrease of 9% between July and September. For its part, in Portugal, new mortgage grants grew by 20% year-on-year in that same period, while in Ireland the advance was around 40%.
In this way, the new mortgage production for the third quarter of the year reached just over 1.5 billion euros, which represents an 8% increase compared to the same period in 2025. "From the next quarters, there will be no drop in Spain, and if it occurs, it will be in a downward trend," predicted the CEO.
When addressing the current issue of access to housing, Ortiz has called for a broad agreement among the different political parties. In this line, he has insisted that only "long-term policies" aimed at structural imbalances will allow addressing the problem at its root.
"The banking sector has been actively financing the acquisition of housing for families; in the case of Bankinter, we have been one of the most active banks in the Official Credit Institute (ICO) program to facilitate access to housing for young people, and we will continue to be in any initiative that is launched and that can help solve the problem," emphasized the executive.