Kiwibank lent more on mortgages in year ended March than Westpac

Kiwibank lent more on mortgages in the year ended March than Westpac did while ANZ Bank New Zealand continues to loose market share.

The Reserve Bank’s bank financial strength dashboard shows Kiwibank lent a net $566.5 million on new mortgages in the March quarter and $2.57 billion in the year ended March.

Westpac was ahead of Kiwibank in the March quarter with net new mortgage lending of $706.3 million, but it lent just $2.01 billion in the year ended March, $530.4 million less than Kiwibank.

Kiwibank’s mortgage lending in the year accounted for 15.63% of net new mortgage lending by registered banks, double its market share at March 31 of 7.83%.

Westpac’s market share slipped from just over 19% to 18.73% - one percent of mortgages held by registered banks at March 31 was worth $3.68 billion.

ANZ’s net new lending in the March quarter was $1.15 billion, but that was only 25.5% of total net new lending by banks in the latest three months compared with its market share at March 31 of 30.15%.

For the year ended March, ANZ lent a net $3.8 billion, or 23.4% of total new lending on mortgages.

Where Westpac and ANZ are losing, ASB and Bank of New Zealand are gaining market share, although not as spectacularly as Kiwibank.

ASB’s net new mortgage lending in the latest quarter was $1.21 billion, 23.4% of net new lending by registered banks, and it was $3.24 billion in the year ended March, 22.3% of the total.

That put ASB’s market share at March 31 at 21.1%.

ASB is clearly making up for the market share it lost through 2023 when it was attempting to protect profit margins and had offered non-competitive mortgage rates.

BNZ’s new lending in the March quarter was $1.07 billion, nearly 21% of the total, and $2.78 billion in the year, 19.2% of the total.

BNZ is the leading business bank but its share in the mortgage market has continued to rise, going from 16.1% at Dec 31, 2023 to 16.8% at March 31 this year.

The data confirms what other numbers have told us, that the long-awaited recovery in the housing market from its post-covid slump hadn’t arrived in the March quarter, with total net new bank lending on mortgages easing to $4.5 billion in the March quarter from $5.14 billion in the December quarter of last year.