HSBC's profit jumps despite bad loans ballooning

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HSBC continued to run down its mortgage book in the December quarter although profitability surged, despite charges for impaired loans nearly doubling.

Tuesday, March 31st 2009, 4:00PM

by Jenny Ruth

HSBC’s net profit for the three months jumped 44.9% to nearly $12 million, bringing net profit for calendar 2008 to $39.8m, a 10.7% increase on the previous year.

The bank’s charges against profit for impaired loans jumped to $6.5 million at December 31 from $3.75 million at September 30.

Gross impaired assets jumped to $33.1 million at December 31 from nearly $13 million at September 30, although they were still only 0.53% of its total $6.19 billion loan book.

Total provisions for impaired loans rose to $13.8 million from $10.65 million. HSBC gave no breakdown of the types of loans which are impaired.

HSBC’s mortgage book fell to $1.16 billion at December 31 from $1.22 million at September 30 and $1.35 billion in December 2007.

With all the banks’ general disclosure documents now published, that puts HSBC’s share of bank mortgage lending at 0.78%, down from 0.84% at September 30. HSBC’s mortgage book has been shrinking since December 2005.

The proportion of HSBC’s mortgages with loan-to-valuation ratios above 80% jumped to $97.7 million, or 8.4% of the total book, from $36.1 million, or 2.96% of the total book, at September 30.

HSBC’s figures confirm the government-owned Kiwibank did the lion’s share of new lending in the December quarter. Excluding the newly registered SBS Bank’s $1.63 billion mortgage book, mortgage lending by banks rose $0.97 billion in the three months of which Kiwibank accounted for $0.87 billion, or 89.7%.

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