APRA has released the quarterly Authorised Deposit-taking Institution Performance data for the March 2019 quarter, revealing a dip in profits.
Net profits after tax for March 2019 were $34.7 billion, which is a decline of 4.7 per cent from the March 2018 quarter.
It is also a quarter-on-quarter decline of $1 billion, as in the December 2018 quarter ADIs reported $35.7 billion in profit.
The statistics are not a surprise to the industry, with a less than enthusiastic decline in profits reported by the banks in half-year results.
CBA reported a 6 per cent decline in net profits in its half-year profits while Westpac reported a fall of 24 per cent in the half-year.
ANZ also reported a decline in net profits with a 5 per cent slide, with NAB being the only one of the big four to report a rise in net profits of 4.3 per cent.
Total assets, though, continue to rise, with a 3.4 per cent increase from $4.667 billion in the March 2018 quarter to $4.824.8 billion this quarter.
Other key statistics continued to rise including a 1.4 per cent rise in total capital base and a 0.7 of a percentage point rise in total risk-weighted assets.
It also showed an improvement in the number of housing loans for ADIs with greater than $1 billion in loans, with a 1.2 per cent increase in the number of loans over the quarter.
A downturn in house prices in Sydney and Melbourne had also affected the new housing loans approved in the quarter, with a 16.5 per cent decline.
ADIs reported $86.8 billion in the first quarter of 2018 but only $72.4 billion in the past quarter, which is no doubt a knock-on effect of the downturn.
The statistics also revealed that ADIs had increased their exposure to commercial property by 4.6 per cent from the first quarter of 2018.
