Australia’s leading banks are ill-equipped to deal with a property market crisis, a leading institutional investor has warned, according to The Australian Financial Review.
The head of credit markets at AMP Capital, Jeff Brunton, said that stress tests of the banks will prove too optimistic should a crisis afflict the booming housing market as they do not factor in the impact on mortgages that do not default.
“The banks will have enough capital to deal with the mortgages and the corporate borrowers who default, but they will then be left with a financial system that has got a high loan-to-value with many Australians in negative equity positions,” Mr Brunton told the AFR.
“The standard stress tests don’t require additional capital for those mortgages that don’t default but change dramatically in loan-to-value terms because of that stress event, and I continue to worry that international investors would have a different view and require more capital to be ¬generated in the system.”