Mortgage relief use passes 100,000
More than 100,000 households are now seeking some form of mortgage relief, according to the latest data from the New Zealand Bankers Association.
New figures show 49,821 borrowers have deferred all loan payments under the six-month mortgage holiday scheme.
A further 53,323 have reduced payments, either to interest only or a smaller repayment of principal.
ANZ — New Zealand’s largest bank — said it had deferred 19,600 home loan repayments and moved 20,900 home loans to interest-only.
As of Tuesday BNZ said it had processed more than 21,000 applications for some change to their mortgage repayments.
About 55 per cent of those were opting for interest only, about 19 per cent had opted for lower repayments, with 26 per cent taking up the sixmonth payment deferral.
Westpac said it had received more than 19,500 requests for home loan deferrals or reductions, and processed roughly 85 per cent of them.
ASB said it had helped 18,057 customers with home loan relief, both mortgage deferral and interest only.
That number included customers who owned their own home and customers who are using their home as security for their business.
A Kiwibank spokesperson said their total number of Covid-19 related inquiries was now over 13,000.
“For personal banking, we’ve received about 5500 requests from customers requiring home loan assistance,” she said.
“To date more than 2500 of our personal customers have opted for a home loan repayment deferral (mortgage holiday) and another 2500 have taken up the interest-only support option. Another 200 or so have opted for a term extension.”
So far demand for the business lending support has been lower with a total of 16,170 businesses seeking to restructure loans or to reduce or defer payments from their bank.
Data on new lending shows 9700 new business loans have been issued — which would include the government-guaranteed business loan scheme.
ANZ said it was working through a number of applications for the government-guaranteed business loan scheme but it was becoming clear that most customers didn’t want to take on additional debt once they realise other Covid support options were available to them.
ANZ is also offering business cus
tomers increased overdraft options and cutting transaction fees.
As of April 23 it had granted 1733 temporary overdraft facilities to businesses needing more working capital, worth nearly $31 million.
“We expect scheme numbers will increase as the economic impact is felt across the New Zealand business community, especially as wage subsidy funds are paid out and businesses need additional support to get back on track over the coming months,” an ANZ spokesperson said.
ASB said it had helped more than 9000 business customers access various relief packages.
This included providing principal relief arrangements for more than 9400 customers, granting loan holidays to another 5300 customers and providing about 1600 customers with temporary or permanent overdraft facilities, among other measures.
ASB had received almost 2000 inquiries about the business finance guarantee scheme and expected that to grow.
To date BNZ had provided assistance for more than 17,000 business customers to a value of $16 billion — using a mix of its own support measures such overdraft extensions and the government-guaranteed loan scheme.
In total more than 230,000 customers had been in contact to discuss their banking situation, BNZ says.
Kiwibank said it had provided assistance measures to more than 3500 business customers in total.
The bank received 142 formal applications under the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme for loans totalling around $21m, a spokesperson said.