Following on for our analysis of the APRA monthly banking statistics, today we explore some of the detail in the home loan statistics. The data shows the net monthly movement by lending institution, split by owner occupation and investment lending. We dropped a few of the smallest players from the data to make the picture clearer. We see some interesting segmental trends. First, lets look at the major changes amongst the main lenders between April and May. The most significant element relates to the CBA portfolio where there appears to be a big swing to investment lending (is this changes in policy, or a data coding issue?). Westpac continues to grow its investment portfolio so, We think CBA may be hunting investment loans more aggressively, but its a big monthly swing.
Now looking at the loan portfolios from January to May, we see again Westpac leading the investment lending, and we see CBA’s uptick in May, offset by a fall in owner occupation lending.
Another way to look at the data is by percentage movement, this view shows the change at the portfolio level, the sum of investment and owner occupied loans. It is worth highlighting the Macquarie Bank growth, much higher than system growth. Bendigo had quite a spike, and AMP had a bad March. What we do not know is how much is a data problem, and how much is a real response to business strategy and execution.
We can also split the data by loan type. This the owner occupation trend, note that at a marker level, it fell slightly overall in May. We see the fall at CBA in May, the spike at Bendigo, the consistent growth at Macquarie and the AMP hiccup.
Turning to the Investment Loan portfolio, the CBA spike shows clearly, the Macquarie Bank growth spurt, the growth at Members Equity, and strong overall spike in investment lending.
We should await the next months data, because the CBA data movements would mask, or change the outcomes. Our own data suggest investment lending is not as strong as suggested by the APRA data.
