New Zealand's banking sector has posted a collective 2.85% decline in quarterly after tax profit, declining from $1.24billion to $1.2billion, while gross residential loans rose 1.19%. He said the banks' gross loans and advances remained ''relatively stable'' with only a $4.59billion, or 1.19% increase, which was the slowest quarterly increase for three years. ''This indicates the banks are generally confident in thequality of their loan books at the moment,'' Mr Kensington said. Across all the banks, gross loans rose 1.19% to $389.92billion in the three months ended March 31, and were 7% higher than a year earlier, BusinessDesk reported. Kiwibank's gross loans rose 2.3%, SBS gained 5.1%, Co-operative Bank 3% and TSB 4.8%.

Source: Otago Daily Times July 12, 2017 13:52 UTC