Mortgage News

Westpac's profit plummets

Sunday 30th of August 2009

The latest general disclosure statement for the Australian bank's New Zealand subsidiary shows net profit for the three months ended June was just $26 million compared with $163 million in the June quarter last year. That brought net profit for the nine months ended June to $186 million compared with $462 million in the same nine months a year earlier.

The quarterly profit fall largely reflected a further $199 million in charges against profit for bad loans, bringing the total for the nine months ended June to $515 million compared with just $97 million in the same nine months a year earlier.

Net interest income fell 9.3% to $321 million in the June quarter but was up 7% at $1.02 billion for the nine months ended June.

Most of Westpac's burgeoning bad debts are from its corporate lending - mortgages gone bad accounted for just $20 million of the June quarter charges and $70 million for the nine months ended June.

Westpac's mortgage book totalled $27.02 billion at June 30, up $136 million from March 31. Using Reserve Bank figures as a proxy for the market, Westpac's new mortgage lending accounted for only 7.7% of the increase in lending on mortgages by registered banks in the June quarter.

That meant its market share slipped from 17.09% to just below 17%.

Its mortgage lending in the March quarter grew $365 million after adding just $60 million in the December quarter.

Westpac had a further $5.18 billion in undrawn mortgages at June 30.

Westpac's mortgages with loan-to-value ratios (LVRs) above 80% continued to decline to 26.9% of its mortgage book at June 30 from 27.4% at March 31 and 28.2% at December 31.

 

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