BankWest chief executive retail Ian Corfield, speaking at a Retail Financial Services lunch in Melbourne organised by the Charlton Group, predicted margins would increase in the coming months.
"I think there's been a fundamental restructure in pricing and the availability of funding," he said, according to a report in
The Age.
"Even when the funding market opens back up again, it won't go back to where it was."
ANZ Mortgages Australia managing director Michael Rowland said current market conditions allowed banks and other financials to rebuild margins.
Bank of Queensland group executive of retail financial services, Robert Hines, predicted more mergers, and among larger banks rather than among smaller institutions such as his own (which has taken over two building societies in the last 18 months).
BankWest's Corfield denied rumours that the bank's British parent company HBOS was looking to sell the business, the newspaper reported.
John Symond, chief executive of Aussie Home Loans, told
The Age separately that "we're finding that competition from the non-bank sector is non-existent. People are now totally reliant on the banks to use their (the banks) money to finance home loans."
Symond predicted the big retail banks would continue to increase home lending rates far above the Reserve Bank's cash rate.
"There's a significant risk to the public and businesses," he said. "There's no doubt that interest rates would rise beyond what they are now."