Commonwealth Bank yesterday reported what it described as a "modest uptick in home loan arrears". The news follows similar reports by ANZ and Westpac last week.The value of mortgages with repayments 90 days or more past due rose from A$2.5 billion in the December quarter to $2.8 billion in the March quarter. Commonwealth has a $336 billion mortgage portfolio.ANZ reported that during the six months to March its 90-day arrears were up 26 per cent half-on-half, with three-quarters of that increase coming from Australian mortgages.Westpac reported that mortgage delinquencies rose 14 basis points, to 60 basis points, over the same period.Both banks reported that the portfolios were well secured and loss rates were down.Commonwealth chief executive Ralph Norris said he did not believe the increase was evidence of a systemic deterioration in the bank's mortgage portfolio.Norris said: "If you take out the effects of the New Zealand earthquake and Queensland flood, it would have been a positive trend."Commonwealth reported unaudited cash earnings of $1.7 billion for the March quarter (cash earnings for the six months to December were $3.3 billion).Credit demand was subdued. Norris said home loan applications had picked up in the past six weeks and would flow through to higher originations in the June quarter. There were some "green shoots" on the commercial side, but it would be some time before they were reflected in higher lending numbers.One benefit of the slow-down in lending is that the bank has been able to meet all its new funding demand through deposit growth. Retail deposits make up 61 per cent of the bank's funding. Commonwealth Bank's chief financial officer, David Craig, said the bank had paid off some of its offshore wholesale debt during the quarter. "We are rolling over our core wholesale funding but we have not done any net wholesale funding," he said.Norris said an expected six or seven per cent growth in assets this year would not present a funding challenge.