The mortgage book has driven significant growth, with new home loan customers up almost 90% year on year
ASB's cash profit fell 1% to $1.35 billion in the year to June 2025.
The bank's statutory net profit after tax was $1.449 billion, down 0.4% on the previous year, as operating expenses jumped 10% to $1.424 billion.
Home lending grew 7% over the period while business and rural lending increased 2%. Customer deposits rose 4% and ASB's KiwiSaver funds under management climbed 12% to $18.8 billion.
Chief executive Vittoria Short said the slight dip is down to increased spending on technology, staff and fraud prevention, as well as the impact of inflation.
“More New Zealanders are choosing to do their banking with ASB across home, business and rural, and we are working hard to make their experience simpler, safer and better," Shortt said.
“While there is uncertainty in the global environment, lower inflation and falling borrowing costs have provided some respite for households and businesses and our exports have held up.”
Mortgage market surge drives growth
ASB has capitalised on the pickup in housing market activity, with new home loan customers up almost 90% year-on-year. Shortt noted that ASB has seen 12,300 first-home buyers get onto the property ladder, while more than 6,800 customers used their KiwiSaver funds for house deposits.
The bank also recruited 80 new home loan specialists ahead of a refinancing wave.
“Many Kiwi locked in short-term rates when interest rates were higher, which led to almost 50% of loans across the country maturing between January and June,” Shortt said. “To get ahead of this, we recruited 80 new home loan specialists and simplified our processes to speed up application approvals.”
On housing supply, ASB committed more than $288 million through its Accelerated Housing Fund for the development of almost 700 new social, affordable and Māori homes since the fund launched in November 2023.
Business lending is also in the spotlight, as ASB extended more than $2 billion in new business lending since July 2024 and cut its floating base rate by 2.25 percentage points. Shortt said ASB will “continue to support our business customers to prepare for the future and manage risks related to ongoing uncertainty.”
The message for mortgage advisers
Executive general manager for personal banking Adam Boyd said mortgage advisers remain crucial to ASB's strategy. He said ASB’s investment into more staff and better processes is going to make a difference for advisers, particularly with regards to turnaround times - an ongoing point of contention for advisers, who frequently cite turnaround times as one of their biggest pain points with banks overall.
"Mortgage advisers are extremely important to ASB and we really value the role advisors play working alongside us to support New Zealanders," Boyd told NZ Adviser.
"This year we've hired an additional 80 home ownership specialists and we have streamlined and simplified our lending processes. We're proud to have been named Canstar's 2025 Bank of the Year for Home Loans."
“With strong demand for broker services, we continue to invest in this channel and have significantly improved our turnaround times since the end of last year,” he added.
