BNZ slowly lifts mortgage broker business
Mortgage brokers accounted for 32.7% of Bank of New Zealand’s mortgages in the six months ended March, up two percentage points from Sept 30 and up from 29.8% from a year earlier.
Thursday, May 4th 2023, 3:22PM 
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That compares with 28.4% in September 2021.
BNZ is still considerably behind the other major banks – ANZ Bank New Zealand, for example originates more than half its mortgages through brokers.
BNZ’s mortgage book grew 3.5%. or by $1.9 billion, to $56.4 billion at March 31 from a year earlier with $1.6 billion of that growth coming in the six months since September.
Mortgages now account for 56% of its total lending, up from 55% a year ago, and 48% of the mortgage book has been lent in Auckland.
Only 8.9% of the book was on floating rates at March 31 and investors accounted for 33.8%, barely changed over the past two years. Those paying interest only fell to 17.5% from 19.2% in September 2021.
The average loan-to-valuation ratio was 63%, down from 65.4% in September 2021.
Mortgage repayments more than 90 days overdue crept up to 0.61% of the book at March 31 from 0.09% a year earlier, although loans regarded as impaired stood at just 0.01%.
“We know our customers well and understand that many New Zealand households are feeling the pressure of cost of living increases, particularly those with home loans,” said chief executive Dan Huggins in reporting the latest results.
“While we’re confident that our home loan customers are able to manage the current higher interest rate environment, for some, it will be challenging,” Huggins said.
Despite that “challenging” environment, BNZ lifted first-half net profit 13.5% to $8.5 million and fattened net interest margin 41 basis points to 2.45%.
BNZ’s parent, National Australia Bank, lifted its first-half net profit 18.8% to A$3.97 billion.
NAB added A$196 million to impaired assets to reflect the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle and other adverse weather events on its New Zealand business.
Huggins said the recently launched MyProperty, an online tool to help home loan customers plan ahead for future interest rate changes, had enabled 18,000 customers to manage their mortgage payments in the last six months.
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If all advisers went "on strike" right now, banks would not have the ability to cope with the customer demand.
One could say that the adviser channel is still being abused by the banks. It is now that advisers should show their power and value, and seek an improvement in payment, systems, and consistency of processes. This would most certainly bring about better outcomes for customers, banks and advisers.