SBS mortgage book swells

SBS Bank's mortgage book swelled in the three months ended December, reflecting its take over of fellow co-operative Hastings Building Society.

Wednesday, March 2nd 2011, 5:00AM

by Jenny Ruth

SBS's profit also jumped, reflecting lower charges for bad loans and strong net interest income.

Finance general manager Tim Loan says the bank's deposit base saw strong growth as the bank attracted deposits from former South Canterbury Finance customers.

SBS's December quarter general disclosure statement (GDS) shows its mortgage book grew $109.3 million to $1.83 billion in the three months. That's using the same capital adequacy-based measure GoodReturns has used since December 2002.

SBS's loan-to-valuation ratio (LVR) table shows exactly the same figures. Unlike some of the other banks, SBS doesn't provide a breakdown of its housing lending in its note on advances to customers.

Loan says the bank's underlying mortgage business is very slow.

Reserve Bank figures, which often don't marry at all well with figures derived from all the home-lending banks' GDSs, show all bank lending on housing grew $422 million in the December quarter.

SBS's mortgages with LVRs above 80% eased to 20.8% of its mortgage book from 22.4% three months earlier while those with LVRs above 90% fell to 17.1% from 18.2%. Government-backed Welcome Home Loans account for 79% of loans with LVRs above 90%.

SBS's net profit for the three months rose 18.7% to $4.6 million after its charge against profit for bad loans fell 11.5% to $3.3 million and net interest income rose 16.6% to $14.6 million.

"We had the hump in terms of bad loans and now we're certainly racing down the other side which we're happy about," Loan says.

Most of SBS's term lending is in the form of redeemable shares which grew by $240.5 million to $2.17 billion in the three months. Other deposits grew by $0.9 million to $252.3 million.

"Overall,we're feeling pretty comfortable with where things are sitting," Loan says.

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