The quarterly banking figures indicate that customers are showing faith in the customer-owned sector, according to COBA chief executive Michael Lawrence.
“APRA’s latest numbers show that customer-owned banking institutions outpaced the major banks and the broader banking sector in growth in housing loans and deposits on both an annual and quarterly basis.”
Mr Lawrence says that the royal commission has had an effect on the major banks that had allowed the customer-owned sector to rise.
“Given the damage to the reputation of the broader banking sector due to misconduct exposed by the financial services royal commission, customers are looking for banking institutions they can trust,” said Mr Lawrence.
The 2018 quarterly ADI performance statistics showed that total assets in the customer-owned sector surpassed $114 billion and the sector made a pre-tax profit of $677 million in the last financial year.
“Our sector’s net profit after tax of $479 million is put back to work for our customers by underpinning the sector’s strength and future growth,” Lawrence said.
Mr Lawrence said customers were coming to COBA banks because they were not out to make profit by squeezing the customer.
“We are profit-making but not profit-maximising. We are not trying to squeeze our customers to please shareholders. We are not perfect, but we are not conflicted about who we are working for,” he said.
Mr Lawrence said recent findings by the government showed that trust in the sector had been eroded by corporate culture and through the evidence of misconduct.
“The need for genuine customer choice in banking has never been more important, with the House of Representatives Economics Committee this month finding that evidence provided to the royal commission has exposed parts of the financial sector as having a corporate culture motivated by greed and lacking in moral leadership,” he said.
