Via Ian Rogers at Banking Day:
The Australian finance crisis of 2018 is roaring, producing an immediate and lasting credit crunch. All banks are tightening scorecards to lift expenses and frame credit analysis on realistic incomes, a secular change sure to impede system credit growth.
The combined work of the Hayne Royal Commission and APRA is driving this drain on confidence, and in the long run hauling down property prices, shifting the gates on affordability.
Recent lending by banks may shift into negative equity, in volume, and the bad debts charge across the industry will mount soon.
Across the industry, residential property loans will from now on be advanced at lower debt to income ratios than those once common at some large lenders.
In sideshow alley (and still bad for banking, directors and top management at AMP) ANZ, CBA, NAB and Westpac will be leaving in numbers, some soon. Accountability may inform hasty changes in personnel at industries beyond banking.
For a sample of the mood, here’s an anecdote from Saturday relayed by a real estate agent neighbour working the hilly north-east of Melbourne.
Not one person fronted to inspect at any of their open houses. Quality housing stock passed in at each of his two auctions that day.
There you go:
- tightening mortgage standards;
- rising funding costs and mortgage interest rates;
- interest-only reset cliff;
- regulatory and management chaos, plus
- the end of negative gearing and SMF borrowing looming.
She’ll be right!
