Westpac and Kiwibank race ahead in home loan lending

Net new lending on mortgages by banks is slowing markedly with three of the big four banks punching well below their weight, their general disclosure statements show.

Tuesday, June 29th 2010, 5:44PM

by Jenny Ruth

Westpac is the exception with its mortgage book growing by $552 million in the three months ended March, accounting for 39.5% of all net new lending by banks and taking its mortgage book to $28.54 billion and its market share to 18.16% at March 31 from 17.96% three months earlier.

Net new mortgage lending by all home-lending banks totaled $1.32 billion in the three months ended March, down from $1.66 billion in the three months ended December 2009 and from $2.3 billion in the September 2009 quarter.

Kiwibank continued to grow its mortgage book at a much faster pace than its market share, although its net new lending was at its lowest level since the June quarter of 2008 when it rose $250 million.

Kiwibank's mortgage book grew by $364 million to $9.36 billion in the March 2010 quarter, accounting for 27.6% of net new bank mortgage lending, down from its $587 million growth in the December 2009 quarter.

Kiwibank's market share stood at 5.96% at March 31, 2010 from 5.78% three months earlier and compared with 3.34% two years earlier.

By contrast, New Zealand's largest bank, ANZ, saw its subsidiary ANZ National Bank's mortgage book fall by $414 million to $40.67 billion in the three months ended March. However, the subsidiary sold a further $2.61 billion in mortgages to ANZ's local branch during the three months.

ANZ's branch, which was created in January last year to get around Australian prudential rules preventing an Australian bank from lending more than 50% of its equity to a subsidiary, saw its mortgage book grow $471 million to $10.09 billion in the March quarter.

Unlike all the other home-lending banks which report under the Basel II rules, the ANZ branch reports under the Basel 1 rules which tend to inflate its mortgage book.

Combining the ANZ National figures with the ANZ branch's, ANZ's share of the mortgage market has shrunk to 32.3% from 33.31% in March last year and compared to 33.81% in March 2008.

ASB Bank's new lending has also been sluggish with its mortgage book growing by $197 million to $37.91 billion in the three months ended March, accounting for 14.9% of total net new mortgage lending by banks in the quarter compared with its 24.12% market share at the end of March. ASB's share of the mortgage market peaked at 24.77% at September 30, 2008.

Bank of New Zealand's mortgage book grew by $126 million, or 9.5% of all new lending, to $25.76 billion in the three months ended March, taking its market share to 16.39%. That compares with 16.66% at June 30, 2009.

Of the three smallest banks, TSB Bank grew its market share slightly to 1.39% at March 31, SBS Bank's slipped slightly to 1.09% and HSBC continues to run down its mortgage book with its share slipping to 0.59%.

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