Pound to Euro Forecast Guide for end-2024 Released: Big Investment Banks Jack Up Their Targets

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Pound Sterling Live and Corpay have launched the Pound to Euro forecast guide for year-end and the first half of 2025.

The guide - available as a free discretionary download - reveals the consensus forecasts made by the world's biggest and most influential investment banks and financial institutions

The latest edition shows a significant 300 pip uplift to the end-2025 median and mean forecast, which is the biggest quarterly hike we have seen in our time covering this data series.

What years of experience have shown us is that analysts at even the biggest institutions are prone to getting it wrong, and sometimes significantly! But a consensus forecast giving the mean and median views of all the banks combined gives an incredibly sound projection.

This is what the guide offers. In addition to the year-end uplift, the March 2025 median and mean levels were each lifted 200 pips by analysts.

"Over the past two years, no G10 economy has seen its data outperform expectations as much as the UK and together with high real rates the currency remains in a sweet spot," says George Saravelos, Strategist at Deutsche Bank.

The median forecast is a useful tool for those looking to make international payments as it can establish a foundational baseline that can help anticipate future market direction.

The highest and lowest point forecasts are also useful in this regard, as they show which analysts have the guts to break away from the herd. Barclays holds the highest target for 2024, which is now set some 100 points higher than the previous target.

The bears in the fold include Santander and Société Générale, who, if correct, are predicting a sizeable pullback in the Pound over the coming months.

HSBC also thinks the Pound is living on borrowed time. "We believe GBP strength is unsustainable at current levels," says HSBC in a recent forecast note, where analysts say the market is underestimating the economic slowdown ahead, as well as the number of interest rate cuts due from the Bank of England.

The forecast guide's release nevertheless comes amidst ongoing strength in the Pound that saw the Pound-Euro exchange rate rally to as high as 1.20 at the start of this week. The advance follows the release of particularly poor Eurozone survey data that showed the region's economy is potentially entering recessionary territory.

This has raised the odds that the European Central Bank will cut interest rates again in October, having just done so earlier in September.

By contrast, the British Pound continues to find support from a domestic economy that continues to grow, ensuring inflation will remain stubborn. This will keep the Bank of England at the back of the central bank pack when it comes to cutting interest rates.