ANZ Added $24bn in Loans and Says Home Lending Is Back to System — But Arrears Hit 86bps

Listen to the Brief

Too Busy to Read? We’ve Got You.

Get this blog post’s insights delivered in a quick audio format — all in under 10 minutes.

Download Audio

This audio version covers: ANZ Added $24bn in Loans and Says Home Lending Is Back to System — But Arrears Hit 86bps

ANZ told the market on 13 August that it has returned home lending to system growth — and in the same update disclosed that its Australian housing loans more than 90 days past due climbed to 86 basis points, up from 83bps three months earlier. The June-quarter numbers land in the middle of a broker market where application volumes have been falling, and they point somewhere brokers should be paying attention: the bank’s fastest-growing engine right now is not the mortgage book.

In This Article

• The Headline Numbers: What ANZ Actually Reported
• “Returning Home Lending to System Growth”: Read That Line Carefully
• The Real Engine: Business & Private Bank Grew 4% in One Quarter
• The Number Further Down the Release: Housing Arrears at 86bps
• The Provisions Paradox: Arrears Up, Charges Down
• Margins and Costs: Why Deep Discounting Has a Floor
• Suncorp at 45%: What a Migration Year Does to Service
• What This Means for Brokers in Australia
• Your Five-Point Review This Week
• The Bottom Line

The Headline Numbers: What ANZ Actually Reported

For the three months to 30 June 2026, ANZ posted an unaudited statutory profit of $1.95 billion and a cash profit of $1.90 billion — up 1% on the quarterly average of the half year to 31 March 2026.

That 1% understates the run rate. The quarter carried a NZD125 million pre-tax provision following a 5 May 2026 New Zealand High Court class action ruling, which ANZ has appealed. Strip it out and cash profit was $1.98 billion, up 5%, with operating expenses down 3%.

The balance sheet moved more than the profit line:

• Net loans and advances: $822 billion to $846 billion, up $24 billion (+3%)
• Customer deposits: $771 billion to $786 billion, up $15 billion (+2%)
• CET1 ratio: 12.51%, up 12bps from March
• Cash return on tangible equity: 11.54%
• Cost-to-income ratio: 49.66%, down 155bps on the same quarter a year earlier

A bank adding $24 billion of loans in ninety days on a 12.51% capital ratio is not rationing credit. That matters when you are deciding where to place a deal.

“Returning Home Lending to System Growth”: Read That Line Carefully

Chief Executive Nuno Matos said ANZ had “continued to improve productivity, margins and business volumes, including accelerating growth in business banking and returning home lending to system growth.”

Read at face value, that is a bank back in the mortgage fight. But note what it does and does not say.

“System growth” means growing in line with the market — not faster than it. It is a recovery from underperformance, not a land grab. And critically, the release contains no separate Australian home loans growth figure. There is a group lending number, an ex-Markets number and a Business & Private Bank number. The mortgage-specific claim sits in the CEO’s commentary, not in the disclosed tables.

That is not an accusation — quarterly updates are summaries, not full results, and the detail sits in the Pillar 3 pack. But treat “back to system” as a directional signal about appetite, not a hard number to quote to a client.

The Real Engine: Business & Private Bank Grew 4% in One Quarter

This is the disclosure that deserves more broker attention than the mortgage line.

Excluding Markets, ANZ’s lending grew $12 billion, or 2%, over the quarter. Within that, Business & Private Bank grew 4% — twice the ex-Markets pace. The CEO’s own framing put “accelerating growth in business banking” ahead of the home lending comment.

Four per cent in a single quarter is a serious clip: a division growing materially faster than the housing book, at a bank with capital to deploy and a stated intent to “accelerate growth and outperform the market” beyond 2027. For a broker business built entirely on residential, that is a structural signal about where lender appetite — and therefore approval speed, pricing flexibility and BDM attention — is being directed.

Why this changes the diversification maths

Brokers have been told to diversify into commercial and asset finance for years, usually as a revenue-smoothing argument. The argument here is sharper: it is about where the credit appetite is. When a lender is chasing growth in a segment, deals in that segment get looked at faster, priced better and declined less often.

The Number Further Down the Release: Housing Arrears at 86bps

Under credit quality, ANZ disclosed that housing loan exposures more than 90 days past due increased in its Australian portfolio to 86bps, from 83bps at 31 March 2026. The New Zealand portfolio moved to 82bps from 80bps.

In plain terms: 0.86% of ANZ’s Australian housing exposures are now more than three months behind. That is a low absolute number by any historical standard and nowhere near a distress signal. But the direction counts — a three-basis-point rise in a single quarter, on both sides of the Tasman.

Two cautions. ANZ draws no causal link and offers no commentary on why the number moved. And 90+ day arrears are a lagging measure — they describe loans stressed some time ago, not the borrower who missed their first payment last month.

What the figure gives you is a current, primary-sourced, defensible data point for a hardship conversation. When a client asks whether they are the only one struggling, the answer is now specific.

The Provisions Paradox: Arrears Up, Charges Down

Sitting alongside the arrears increase is a set of numbers pointing the opposite way:

• Individual provision charge of $65 million, $9 million lower than the 1H26 quarterly average
• An annualised individual provision loss rate of 3bps, down from 4bps
• Collective provision balance up just $26 million to $4.48 billion, with coverage of credit risk-weighted assets slipping 2bps to 1.20%
• Non-performing exposures steady at 0.55% of total credit exposure

Arrears rising while provision charges fall is not a contradiction — it is a judgement. The bank is signalling it expects loans currently in arrears to be worked out rather than written off, consistent with borrowers in temporary difficulty rather than negative equity.

The broker read-through is practical: the lender is provisioning for cure, not for loss. That is an environment where hardship arrangements, repayment restructures and interest-only switches are far more likely to be entertained than in a genuine credit downturn. If you have clients in trouble, this is the window for those conversations.

Margins and Costs: Why Deep Discounting Has a Floor

Group net interest margin improved 1 basis point to 1.54%. Excluding Markets it rose 4bps, which ANZ attributed primarily to the capital and replicating portfolio rather than to loan pricing. On costs, the bank reaffirmed FY26 guidance of expenses down 5% year on year, having exited 84% of 3,500 announced roles and realised 73% of an estimated $875 million in gross FY26 savings.

That is a bank improving profitability through margin and cost discipline, not through volume bought with price. Brokers running a pure rate-shopping strategy at ANZ should calibrate accordingly. Pricing exceptions will exist, but the strategic posture is not a price war.

Suncorp at 45%: What a Migration Year Does to Service

ANZ reported that 45% of Suncorp Bank integration activities were complete at end-June 2026, on track for 57% by end-September, with full customer migration targeted for June 2027. Separately, the single customer digital front-end sits at 24% complete, tracking to 45% by end-September and full delivery to Retail and SME customers by September 2027.

Integrations of this scale reliably produce operational noise: policy alignment across the two brands, system cutover windows, changed document requirements and re-accreditation admin. That is not a criticism — it is what a migration year looks like from the broker side of the counter.

The practical implication is scheduling. If you have Suncorp-originated clients approaching a fixed-rate expiry or refinance decision in the next twelve months, know which brand and system they will sit in when the decision falls due, and build a buffer into your timelines.

What This Means for Brokers in Australia

Four things, in order of how quickly they should change your behaviour.

1. Reweight your lender conversations toward business lending. The 4% quarterly growth in Business & Private Bank is the clearest appetite signal in the release. If you hold a commercial or asset finance accreditation you are not using, this quarter is the argument for using it. If you do not hold one, the aggregator conversation is overdue.

2. Treat the arrears number as a conversation trigger, not a headline. Run your back book for clients who came on at peak serviceability assumptions, particularly 2022–2023 vintages rolling off fixed rates.

3. Do not expect ANZ to buy your deal. Position it on policy fit, turnaround and capital strength rather than assuming it will be sharpest on rate.

4. Keep your Best Interest Duty file consistent with all of the above. Under BID, a recommendation driven by lender appetite must still be documented as being in the client’s interests. If you place more business with a lender because approvals are faster there, say so in your notes and show the comparison you ran. Appetite is a legitimate reason; an undocumented one is a file problem.

Your Five-Point Review This Week

1. Segment your pipeline by division, not just by lender. If commercial and asset finance is under 10% of your pipeline in a quarter where business lending is growing at twice the group rate, that is a strategy gap.
2. Pull a fixed-rate expiry list for the next six months. Contact every client rolling off before year end, with a repricing position prepared before you call.
3. Flag your at-risk back book. Identify clients who missed a payment or asked about hardship in the last twelve months and make contact before the arrears clock reaches 90 days.
4. Check your Suncorp-exposed clients. Note which face a decision point before June 2027 and add a timing buffer.
5. Audit one recent file for appetite reasoning. Check whether your notes explain why that lender in client-interest terms. If not, fix the template, not just the file.

The Bottom Line

ANZ’s June-quarter update is a growth story with a small asterisk. The bank added $24 billion in loans, lifted capital to 12.51%, improved margins and says it has dragged home lending back to system pace. That is a lender open for business.

The asterisk is 86 basis points. Australian housing arrears rose while provision charges fell — a combination saying the bank expects stress to cure rather than crystallise. That is the more actionable signal, because it defines what is possible in a hardship conversation right now.

The strategic signal is the 4%. Business & Private Bank is growing at twice the rate of the rest of the ex-Markets book, and the CEO named business banking before mortgages. Residential broking is not going anywhere, but the growth capital at the majors is visibly pointing elsewhere.

What to watch next: the remaining major bank quarterly disclosures over the next fortnight, to see whether the business-strong, housing-soft split is an ANZ story or an industry one — and whether the arrears drift appears in other portfolios. If it does, broker diversification stops being optional advice and becomes a business planning requirement.

Disclaimer: This article is for general information and professional development purposes only. It does not constitute legal, compliance, or financial advice. All figures are drawn from ANZ Group Holdings Limited’s 2026 Third Quarter Trading Update released 13 August 2026. Brokers should consult their aggregator’s compliance team and, where required, seek independent legal advice regarding their obligations under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 and ASIC’s responsible lending guidelines.