Record interest rate spread

One of the pillars of Greek banks' profitability has been the limited increase in interest rates on deposits, leading to the highest interest spread in the eurozone - i.e. the difference between loan interest rates and deposit interest rates.

This spread rose to 3.25 percentage points in the first half of 2023 from 2.3% in the first half of 2022, the highest difference among European banks and double the European average, which was just above 1.5%.

This emerged from an analysis by DBRS Morningstar on the profitability prospects of European banks in 2023 and 2024, based on which a similar trend is recorded by Portuguese banks, which show a marginally smaller - close to 3.1% - net interest margin (NIM) compared to the Greek ones, followed by the Irish and Spanish ones, with a corresponding index close to 2.5%.

DBRS estimates that the positive impact of high...