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Via AFR:

Westpac Group will this weekend upgrade its key measures for assessing property borrowers’ capacity to service their debt, amid intense pressure from regulators to provide better insights into households’ financial commitments and vulnerability to financial stress.

The bank, which includes Bank of Melbourne, BankSA and Bank of St George, is the first to act on lending criteria following warnings from Wayne Byres, chairman of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, about “blind spots” in lenders’ understanding of mortgage borrowers’ other commitments.

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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.