Kiwibank back on top in mortgage market, lending extra NZ$761 mln in June quarter

Kiwibank grew its residential mortgage book by NZ$761 million or close to 10% during the June quarter, jumping back into the lead position it grabbed during its stunning December quarter. ASB had jumped back into the lead in the March quarter, but its net new mortgage lending slumped in the June quarter. Kiwibank's net new mortgage growth was more than double that of the nation's largest bank, ANZ National, although ANZ National has to work harder to grow its book, given many older customers are repaying debt. BNZ grew its mortgage book the second most in the quarter, increasing it by NZ$637 million or 2.4%. ASB, ANZ National and Westpac lost market share. TSB and SBS Bank grew their mortgage books by 2.3% and 2.4% respectively from March. Figures collected by interest.co.nz show these seven banks had a combined mortgage book of NZ$166.6 billion at June 30, 2009. This was up 1.1% from the end of March 2009, while the seven banks saw 1.4% growth in the March quarter from December. Now that ASB's GDS for the year to June 30, 2009 has been released, we can compare the mortgage book growth of these seven banks in the June quarter from March. Banks lent a net extra NZ$4.06 billion in first six months of 2009. Since the beginning of the global financial crisis in June last year New Zealand's banks have lent a net extra NZ$7 billion into the housing market.

While we still do not have figures for HSBC, its market share has been contracting over the past year and is around NZ$1 billion in an overall NZ$171 billion New Zealand mortgage market. ASB grew its residential mortgage book by NZ$192 million, or 0.46% over the quarter, to take its total book to NZ$41.768 billion. ANZ National's book grew by NZ$246 million (0.46%) to take it to NZ$53.972 billion. BNZ's was up NZ$637 million (2.37%) to NZ$27.471 billion. Kiwibank saw NZ$761 million (9.8%) of growth, taking its book to NZ$7.763 billion. SBS Bank's book was up NZ$39 million (2.38%) to NZ$1.677 billion. TSB's grew by NZ$44 million (2.3%) to NZ$1.953 billion. Westpac saw a contraction in its mortgage book over the quarter, down NZ$89 million (-0.28%) to NZ$32.008 billion. These figures include both on- and off-balance sheet loans. With the overall growth rate of 1.1% for the seven banks over the quarter, Westpac's 0.28% contraction, along with ASB and ANZ National's 0.46% growth, shows these three banks lost market share over the quarter. Kiwibank was the big winner, while BNZ produced a surprise result with the second largest nominal growth to its residential mortgage book during the June quarter. These charts are taken from our free subscriber service which is updated every few weeks. Here is a link to the current page, which also shows the proportion of mortgages that are on fixed and floating rates.