Margins improve for Heritage
Heritage Building Society lifted its margins and its profit in the year to June 2010. The company released highlights of its full year financials in a media release yesterday.Net profit increased 17 per cent to $29.9 million. The interest margin increased to 1.6 per cent from 1.5 per cent.The society withheld some lower yielding home loan products from the broker channel for much of the year, leading to a fall in the percentage of loans sourced from third parties to 54 per cent.Lending through Heritage's 59 branches in south-east Queensland increased 28 per cent to $610 million. Overall new home loan business was $1.3 billion, down slightly on 2009.John Minz, chief executive of Heritage, said the lender reintroduced all loans, including cheaper, "basic" loans to the broker network in July.Heritage said its liquidity ratio at June 2010 was 19.2 per cent, its capital adequacy ration was 13.9 per cent and its home loan arrears rate was 0.33 per cent.