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2 Comments
The auditors of the main banks are as follows:
ANZ - KPMG
ASB - PwC
BNZ - EY
Kiwibank - PwC
Westpac - PwC
So if KPMG says "bank funding costs are going down" and their FIPS reports shows that for each bank, what should we make of bank management saying "funding costs are going up" ?
What I see when I look at the disclosure statements is lower funding costs, same as KPMG/FIPS. That is why I have been sceptcal of bank management's claims.
ANZ is just one of the banks whose management says their funding costs have been going up. It seems their auditor reports otherwise.
Bank management needs to make their case - or stop making an unsupportable claim.
This goes to the heart of OCR holdbacks, or very temporary and selective term deposit 'rises'.
Bank management have been talking the "funding costs are going up" for too long now. It has become the basis of a credability problem for them. Why believe management when their auditors say the reverse?
Times are always tough for banks everytime they talk about funding and risks. Then they turn around and post a $1.5b profit for the year.
Then if you make that case they say they have to prepare for hard times in the future. They then protect themselves by paying out large dividends to investors rather than increasing their capital reserves.
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