Commonwealth Bank is shying away from the brokers channel to offset pressure on margins. “We have focused on proprietary distribution with new proprietary home loan fundings in the quarter broadly flat on the prior comparative period at $18 billion” the bank said in a trading update for the September 2023 quarter yesterday. “Lower margin new broker fundings declined to around $5 billion over the same period” the bank said. However, “home loan balances declined $4.5 billion in the quarter, as a consequence of our focus on increasing our share of Australian home loan revenue,” the bank said. Home loan arrears increased two basis points to 0.49 per cent over the quarter and “remain low, supported by a strong labour market.”  Credit card arrears increased nine bps to 0.64 per cent “with elevated arrears observed in the low-income segment”. The bank said it opened around 150,000 new transaction accounts over the quarter, “driven by new migrant account openings”. Household deposits increased $10 billion over the quarter. CBA said its cash profit for the September quarter of $2.5 billion was one per cent higher than the prior comparative quarter, but flat compared with the average of the profit in the last two quarters of FY2023.