Data from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) Monthly Authorised Deposit-taking Institution (ADI) Statistics highlighted a strong month of growth in the sector.
Total residents loans and finance leases increased by $14.6 billion or 0.5%, led by a $8.5 billion or 0.7% increase in owner-occupied housing lending.
However ANZ saw its mortgage book lose an estimated $1 billion despite strong gains from other big four banks.
ANZ's combined value for investment and owner occupied mortgages stood at $261.77 billion for the end of July period, a decline from $262.79 billion at the end of June.
In comparison, CBA's total value was an estimated $486.33 billion for the same period ending 31 July, a rise from $483.62 billion the month prior.
Westpac grew from $417.9 billion to $420.17 billion, and NAB grew from $267.75 billion to $269.21 billion in the same period.
CoreLogic data suggests property prices have risen 15.8% from January through August, while PEXA data shows the major banks clawed back home loan marketshare through the pandemic.
The most recent data from APRA also suggests that ANZ struggled to meet the high turnover of mortgage and refinance applications, resulting in many customers refinancing with other lenders.
For ANZ, customers taking advantage of low interest rates also saw wait times for mortgage and refinance approvals balloon out.
In an interview yesterday with ANZ's media arm bluenotes, ANZ's retail and commercial group executive, Mark Hand, admitted "assessment times moved out to a level we weren’t happy with".
Questions put forth to ANZ by Savings.com.au in July indicated home loan approval took 'typically' as long as 32 days - much slower than other lenders taking as little as a day.
In his bluenotes interview, Mr Hand also said that ANZ has done a lot of work over the past 18 months on processing capacity.
"We saw a very strong performance in the home loan business in the second half of last year," he said.
"What we didn’t predict however was the huge, sustained rise in application volumes in 2021, particularly in the refinance market with customers shifting to take up fixed rates.
"This means we are now handling double the applications we were two years ago."
Despite the down month, Mr Hand said that ANZ's approval rates are beginning to improve.
"We understand the impact when our response times are too slow, but pleasingly, with assessment times in the broker space having improved somewhat we are seeing business from that channel starting to return," he said.
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Image by Luis Villasmil via Unsplash
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