Westpac Banking Corporation Analysis

Overview

Westpac has been a proud part of New Zealand history and community since 1861. Beginning life as The Bank of New South Wales, WBC changed their name to Westpac in 1982. Over time the bank has grown stronger with the addition of the Commercial Bank of Australia and TrustBank. After 145 years in New Zealand, the Bank's local identity was formally strengthened by the launch of Westpac New Zealand Limited in 2006.

Today, Westpac has over 1.3 million customers. Westpac operates two banks in New Zealand: Westpac New Zealand Limited, a New Zealand subsidiary, and Westpac Banking Corporation (NZ Division), a branch of Westpac Banking Corporation.

Westpac New Zealand Limited provides a full range of financial services for retail and business banking, including home and business lending. Westpac has over 5,500 staff, 196 branches and nearly 500 ATMs nationwide, as well as phone assist call centres and 24-hour phone banking services. The Online Banking service was launched in April 2000 and now has over 566,000 registered users (September 2006).

Westpac is also an award winning provider of banking services to small to medium business and is the banker of the New Zealand government.

Westpac completed its merger with St.George Bank by way of scheme of arrangement. The merger, was approved by holders of St.George ordinary shares on 13 November 2008 and subsequently approved by the Federal Court of Australia on 17 November 2008. On 1 March 2010 Westpac and St.George commenced operating as a single authorised deposit-taking institution. In conjunction, the legal entity, St.George Bank Limited was deregistered and Westpac became its successor in law.

The 5 key divisions of Westpac including: Consumer Bank, Business Bank, BT Financial Group, Westpac Institutional Bank and Westpac New Zealand. Through these 5 divisions the company serve over 13 million customers.

Performance

The following information was extracted from Westpac Banking Corporation Limited's Half year results, released 5 May 2025

• Net profit was down 1% to $3,457m. Including Notables net profit was down 1% to $3,317m.
• Net interest income increased 2% to $9,569 million. Average interest-earning assets increased by 3%.
• Core NIM was stable at 1.80% with persistent competition in lending and term deposits. Group NIM fell 1 basis point to 1.88%.
• Non-interest income decreased 3% to $1,424 million. Trading and other income was down 15%. Net fee income remained flat at $840 million while net wealth management income grew 10%.
• Loans increased 5% to $825 billion. This included growth in Australian housing loans of 5%3 or at 0.9x system4, business lending up 14% and institutional lending up 15%.
• Customer deposits grew 7% to $697 billion. This included 9% growth in Australian household deposits.
• Operating expenses of $5,698 million increased 6% reflecting our UNITE program, third party technology costs, increased software amortisation and salary and wage growth, including an investment in more bankers.
• The credit impairment charge was 6 basis points of average loans, down from 9 basis points. Households are proving resilient and levels of business stress remain low.