KEY POINTS:
ANZ National, which this week moved to require home loan applicants to have a 20 per cent deposit, said it is flush with cash.
The largest bank in the country released a general disclosure statement today with a previously announced $1.163 billion annual profit in it and would not be drawn on a forecast for the current year.
ANZ National denied it has tightened up lending to business customers as well as home buyers.
"There is no policy tightening," chief executive Graham Hodges said with respect to business lending.
"With any customers it is a question of how they see themselves versus how the bank would see them," he said .
The bank said it was prudent for it to be part of the Government's wholesale guarantee scheme, and that meant it had to be part of the retail deposit guarantee scheme.
Mr Hodges was hopeful the schemes would end before the two years they are currently expected to operate.
The bank did a fairly substantial raising in global commercial paper markets a few weeks ago and said that, in general, it had long-dated maturities in its commercial paper portfolio.
"We are flush with cash," said chief financial officer Jeremy Robson. "We have nearly historic levels of liquidity," he said.
The bank expects to need the backing of the wholesale guarantee to raise term debt, which is longer than a year, on global wholesale markets as these markets are currently closed to anything but guaranteed customers.
ANZ National said it genuinely wanted to help customers to stay in their homes.
The tightening of credit criteria on home loans gave the bank more flexibility in dealing with customers.
"If you are up against the limit in terms of the value of your property there is less flexibility for the bank."
Mr Hodges said he did not know how far the property market would fall, but it could come off another 10 per cent in the next 18 months.
"I think what we are saying is we don't quite know but we think it is important for customers to be prudent in case," he said.
Demand for home loans was significantly lower.
"We saw it slow from late last year and step down much more significantly from March onwards," he said.
The bank had a liquid asset portfolio of $8 billion at September 30 and this had increased to above $9 billion.
"We have got probably more cash around us than we actually need," Mr Hodges said.
ANZ tried the Reserve Bank's term auction facility this week to test it.
Mr Robson said that before international markets choked up, the bank had put a lot of its commercial paper into one-year, rather than three-month, terms.
"We entered into this turmoil state pretty well prepared," he said.
- NZPA
