NAB's Andrew Irvine on the hottest sector in banking
The margins in home mortgages are tightening so banks are shifting their attention to the smaller business sector - long dominated by NAB. So what does the boss of its business bank think?
Just what constitutes “business” in the business banking world is rubbery. At each of the Four Pillars it’s housed and measured in a slightly different way but the broad outlines are clear.
It’s a hot sector - Commonwealth Bank is investing $600 million to build its book, Westpac and ANZ have re-established the divisions as stand alone entities. But for the last three decades, National Australia Bank has been the market leader. Capital Brief spoke to NAB’s Group Executive, Business and Private Banking, Andrew Irvine to get the view from the front.
Again this year your division was a strength of the NAB result, delivering $5.3 billion of the bank’s $12.4 billion underlying profits. What did you think?
They were a good set of results. It is getting tougher in Australia. Both from a competitive dynamic perspective as well as the fact there's a little bit less growth in the economy and certain segments of our customer base are doing it tougher today. So, we're happy our pipelines are still quite comparable with this time last year. There's still lots of businesses out there seeking to grow.
