Which bank is growing fastest in the residential mortgage market? It depends on whose statistics you look at

By Gareth Vaughan

What's going on when two banks claim to be winning the biggest slice of residential mortgage business?

One of them's stretching the truth, right? Well no actually, it seems both are right. It just depends on which statistics you look at.

Asked by interest.co.nz last week how her bank was doing in the battle for home loans, ASB CEO Barbara Chapman said: "If you look at the net registrations (nationwide) for homes in the past few months you will see that we are way outstripping our competitors in that."

Given ANZ was the most aggressive bank in the market during 2012, growing its residential mortgage book by NZ$2.93 billion or 6% against overall market growth of 4%, Chapman's assertion seemed surprising. And indeed when it was run past ANZ a spokesman for that bank responded with: "ANZ continues to win the largest share of new mortgage registrations in NZ."

He cited Terralink's data.

Going back to ASB for clarification on what data Chapman uses, showed she was citing three month rolling average figures for net mortgage registrations (total gains and losses) across all the banks. These ASB gets from Property IQ, which uses Land Information New Zealand data.

And this PropertyIQ data does indeed show ASB in the lead. It shows ASB pushed ahead of ANZ last November and retained its lead into February. It also shows Kiwibank overtook ANZ in December and has held second, with ANZ dropping to third. Fourth, since August last year when it passed Westpac, is BNZ, with Westpac fifth.

Kiwibank leading Auckland gains

Meanwhile, Terralink managing director Mike Donald says as of January 31, ANZ had more net mortgages, including residential mortgages, registered nationally than ASB. That said, in both the three months, and six months, to January 2013, ASB had a higher net gain in mortgage registrations than ANZ, Donald says.

"In the Auckland region, the net gains for ASB Bank and ANZ Bank are actually very similar for the last six months to January 2013. However, the three month period to January 2013 again shows a net gain in favour of ASB Bank. Interestingly, for this same three month period in the Auckland region, it is Kiwibank that outperforms both ASB and ANZ in terms of net mortgage gains."

"In contrast, Terralink data shows that nearly 5,000 properties nationally have had the mortgage discharged in the six month period to January 2013. A discharged mortgage indicates that the property has become freehold and is now mortgage free," Donald adds.

Meanwhile, Property IQ data covering monthly actual number and share of mortgage registrations and discharges, gives ANZ the clear lead with ASB second.

Strong December quarter for ASB

The ASB and ANZ General Disclosure Statements for the December quarter tell another story again. ASB's shows it grew residential mortgages by NZ$932 million, well ahead of ANZ's NZ$500 million growth, which was well down on ANZ's growth of just under NZ$1 billion and just over NZ$1 billion in the previous two quarters, respectively. Kiwibank's GDS hasn't yet been released.

Last October Hisco told interest.co.nz ANZ staff had trained on new systems during August and September, ahead of the group moving the ANZ and National banks to one IT platform in late October, which he suggested could be reflected in lower mortgage settlement figures for his bank in November-December.

And in additional aggressive comments Hisco also said ANZ was winning the biggest slice of residential mortgage business in Auckland with a lot of customers moving across from ASB, which he described as "an Australian bank like us" with "no territorial rights over Auckland."

With the phasing out of its National Bank brand, and conversion of many of that bank's branches to blue ANZ ones, ANZ has visions of having more branches in Auckland than ASB. And Kiwibank recently launched a "limited time special" six-month, fixed-term home loan interest rate of 4.79%, which is the lowest advertised rate the bank has offered in its 11-year history.

So watch this space.

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