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By: Staff Reporter
Westpac is expected to slow its home loan growth in line with the other majors over the coming 12 months.
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Speaking at a business lunch in Melbourne yesterday, the bank’s chief executive Gail Kelly said competition was starting to re-emerge in the mortgage market, which would ultimately serve to slow Westpac’s pace of growth.
“We were pleased last year for us to support customers and that resulted in organic market share growth. But for this coming period, other players are coming back into the market, which is good, we’re pleased to see that and we would expect to grow at or a little above system growth,” Ms Kelly said.
Westpac added $43 billion worth of mortgages to its book last year – almost double the average pace of growth across all other banks.
Going forward, Ms Kelly said the bank would be taking a sustainable approach to business, which includes “extending the average duration of wholesale funding, preparing for new regulatory changes, and pricing loans appropriately for risk while also taking into account higher funding costs”.
“And further in this challenging environment, we need to up the ante on our communication, do a better job of explaining what we are about, why we make the decisions we do and how we seek to transparently balance needs of all our stakeholders,” she said.
