The personal loan pool which allows customers to consolidate their debts or purchase a new car continues to grow each month. As at 31 May 2018, the loan pool stood at $46.6M, increasing at approximately $1.18M per month over the last five months. I was hoping they would be cracking the $50M mark at the close of June, not to be. They’re probably a month or two away from reaching that magical figure. It’s like starting to swim upstream; it gets a bit harder each month to actually increase the size of the pool once it gets to a certain size. They are certainly writing more than $1.18M in new loans a month, it’s probably over $2M when you factor in the effect of monthly repayments and interest. Westpac have come to the party increasing the loan facility to $45M. I am not sure why the bank has been so reluctant to provide a long term facility that will allow for future growth? Anyway, they’re still growing! Perhaps it’s FSA playing hardball with the bank!
They are growing the home loan pool a lot faster, the last update was in February with a loan pool size of $342M as at 31 January 2018. The loan pool appears to be growing at approximately $4.8M per month. Lending is a game of margins, there is obviously enough margin in it for them to be growing at the level that they currently are. They went several years without growing the home loan pool much at all; conditions must be more favourable at present. Westpac seem to be cooperating in full!
The cash cow of the business has been the debt agreement business. Given the record number of people taking out these arrangements in the community, I would suggest that they have had a good year.
https://www.afsa.gov.au/statistics/personal-insolvency-statistics-0
