National Australia Bank Ltd (NAB), one of Australia’s largest lenders, has announced that it will ease off its aggressive residential mortgage lending. However, it still intends to keep growing at a faster pace than its competitors.
“We are anticipating that we will grow at a fast rate with our home lending, but probably not at the same pace,” said Lisa Gray, Head of Personal Banking at NAB.
NAB has seen significant growth in its residential mortgage business, increasing its market share to 14.7 percent in March 2012 from 12.8 percent in September 2009. In the last 36 months, the bank has been offering the lowest standard variable mortgage rate.
Gray added that NAB hopes to benefit from the recovery of its retail operations, which has been in a slump since the 2008 global financial crisis but managed to grow its profits by 21 percent over the past two years.
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