Kiwi Group Holdings (‘Group’), which comprises Kiwibank Limited and associated wealth management, insurance and lending businesses has achieved an after tax profit of $131 million for the year ended 30 June 2016 – down 0.8% on the previous year*.
The bulk of the profit was provided by the Kiwibank Banking Group (‘Kiwibank’) which achieved an after-tax profit of $124 million**.
Group Chief Executive Paul Brock said the flat result reflected the challenging environment following global uncertainty and increased funding costs for banks; all within a very competitive market and during a period of significant investment in bank infrastructure and services.
In the last year, Kiwibank:
- Grew lending and advances to customers by 7.0% from $15.6 billion to $16.7 billion
- Grew customer deposits by 7.6% from $13.7 billion to $14.8 billion
- Saw a 15% reduction in impairment losses on loans and advances to $11million
Mr Brock said the last year was one of consolidation with significant progress in the integration of the new core IT operating system. “There have also been major changes to our retail network with branch upgrades and the opening of the first standalone Kiwibank branch in central Hamilton.”
Kiwibank now operates over 1 million customer accounts, with 419,000 customers now identifying Kiwibank as their main financial institution. Market share in the personal mortgage market has been maintained at 7.0%, while the business banking team has expanded its presence in the SME sector to 8.4%.
Mr Brock also said Kiwi Wealth, New Zealand Home Loans and Kiwi Insurance had all grown their businesses; particularly the Wealth division, which now manages $3.9 billion of customer funds and over 158,000 KiwiSaver accounts.
Overall, Mr Brock said profitability and rates of return for the Group were satisfactory in what is a very competitive environment. “We continue to focus on improving our product and service offering, investing in making Kiwibank a better bank and spear-heading development of digital services.”
*Underlying, unaudited result of the KGH Group
**30 June 2016 Disclosure Statement
At a strategic level, Mr Brock said the most significant announcement during the year was in April when the Group’s shareholder, New Zealand Post, announced it would seek to divest 45% of its ownership to the New Zealand Super Fund (25%) and ACC (20%).
For further information: Bruce Thompson, Communications Manager (04) 460 6831