BNZ’s Thorburn comfortable with level of low equity home loans, wary of property developers

Thu, 09 May 2013

By Paul McBeth May 9 (BusinessDesk) - Bank of New Zealand chief executive Andrew Thorburn says he’s comfortable with the level of low equity home loans the lender is writing, though he is still wary of funding new property developments. About 15 percent of the Auckland-based lender’s mortgage book is at a high loan-to-value ratio of 80 percent or above, the lowest among all of the major banks which are about 20 percent, Thorburn told BusinessDesk. BNZ charges a low equity premium of 0.4 to 0.5 percentage point premium on loans with an LVR ab...

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