Briefs: Auswide customers migrating off support, Westpac warns on high NZ prices 04 November 2020 6:33AM Banking Day staff Auswide Bank, Consumer lending, Arrears/performance/credit quality., Mortgages, Westpac, Property prices Around two-thirds of Auswide Bank’s customers reliant on “Covid-19 loan assistance” have migrated off this support. As of September, “loan assistance had fallen to 3.3 per cent of Auswide’s loan book, compared to almost 9 per cent at the end of FY2020” the bank said yesterday. Overall, the bank has had a healthy start to the financial year. Net profit for the first quarter lifted 36 per cent to A$5.6 million. The net interest margin widened 10 basis points to 1.99 per cent. Westpac NZ CEO David McLean did the rounds of the media yesterday, sharing his view that the latest Kiwi housing boom was not healthy in the medium to long term. In the short term, it was “not a bad thing’, acting as a ‘sugar rush’ to boost Post-Covid consumer confidence, but longer-term the current record high housing prices were unhealthy, worsening inequality and starving the productive sector of capital, he told reporters. “I think the Reserve Bank will be well aware of these factors and wrestling with them,” McLean said.