KEY POINTS:
State-owned Kiwibank has announced an after-tax profit of $36.8 million for the year ended June 30, a rise of close to $6m on the year before.
Chief executive Sam Knowles said the result was "very satisfactory in a challenging economic environment.
The profit for the previous year (2007) has been restated, under new accounting procedures adopted by banks, from $25.5m to $30.9m.
Knowles said loans during the year ended June rose 57 per cent from $3.6 billion to $5.6b.
Retail deposits increased 46 per cent from $3.3b to $4.8b.
"Our very strong deposit growth enabled the bank to be largely self-funded for residential and small business loans," said Mr Knowles.
"This reduced the bank's exposure to the more expensive and volatile wholesale markets and enabled us to maintain competitive home loan rates. In fact the bank continually led the market down in loan interest rates, but still maintained some of the best term deposit and Online call rates available."
The increase in the loan portfolio included the acquisition of the AMP home loan portfolio of $700 million.
Knowles said the underlying performance of the bank was very strong.
"The financial result has been affected by new accounting procedures that change the way in which the profitability of loans is assessed. The impact of that has been to increases last year's profit, but slightly constrain the result for this year. But the really important fact is that the bank continues to increase profit month by month, year by year."
- NZPA
