Business as usual for Macquarie retail
The head of Macquarie Bank's banking and financial services group, Peter Maher, said the bank's decision to reduce its involvement in the Australia residential mortgage market would not affect its other retail lending businesses, which include a credit card that was launched only last year and a loan package for self-managed superannuation funds that want to gear into property.Macquarie also has mortgage businesses in North America and Europe. These will continue to operate normally. Maher said: "The North American and European mortgage markets are different. They have their idiosyncrasies. For example the Canadian Government supports that country's RMBS market, which continues to operate."As to the other retail finance products it sells in the local market, Maher said Macquarie would continue to service its 95,000 existing mortgage borrowers and would look for cross-sell opportunities in that customer base. Mortgage managers may be losing access to funds from wholesalers and have to expect to pay more for their funding, and not just the additional 25 basis points rise in the cash rate pushed through this week.Adelaide Bank yesterday bumped up the delivery rate to mortgage managers by 40 basis points, the second time the bank's wholesale arm has added margin to compensate for higher cost of funds.At this stage Adelaide Bank is saying its retail banking customers will face rate rises of just 25 basis points.Seiza Mortgages, a niche mortgage funder, also added 40 basis points to the base rates at which it provides the funding to managers, and then just for prime, full doc loans.Low doc loan rates increased by 50 basis points and no doc loans increased by 125 basis points.