Which banks are driving the investor bubble?

The Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) has released its monthly banking statistics that allow us to examine in detail which banks are driving the investor mortgage bubble and, more to the point, which must also be reined for doing so.

The statistics show unsurprisingly that in volume terms it is the big four banks that are dominant:

For the past eighteen months, the two Sydney banks, CBA (the big spikes for which appear to be bulk re-categorisations of loans as “investor”) and WBC have driven surge. However, more recently both have been slowing with CBA now pushing out less volume than NAB. NAB has been accelerating its investor lending since Andrew Thornton was announced as CEO. ANZ has also been playing catch-up. Of the mid-tier banks, SUN has gotten very aggressive recently.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.