ISCOVER
Non-major bank AMP Bank has seen a return to loan book growth in 2025 and is anticipating a stronger second half as it rolls out its new lending platform.
AMP Limited has released its financial results for the first half of calendar year 2025 (1H25), revealing that AMP Bank’s residential mortgage book has returned to growth.
The bank’s residential mortgage book grew by $0.3 billion in the first six months of the year, a turnaround from a $1.5 billion decrease in the first half of 2024.
This growth contributed to an overall increase in AMP Bank’s total loan book, which grew by 2.8 per cent to $23.3 billion, up from $22.7 billion in 1H24.
It was primarily fuelled by the higher-margin investor lending segment, which also contributed to a 2.9 per cent rise in AMP Bank’s underlying net profit after tax (NPAT) to $36 million.
Investors made up 39 per cent of the bank’s mortgage portfolio in 1H25, up from 37 per cent in 1H24 and 35 per cent in 1H23.
The bank’s net interest margin (NIM) also saw an increase to 1.30 per cent in 1H25, up from 1.28 per cent in 1H24 – a result of fixed-rate loans rolling over into higher-margin variable loans and margin optimisation in funding.
AMP CEO Alexis George told The Adviser that AMP Bank’s growth was disciplined, and that the company was pivoting towards growth in its strategy.
While noting the increase in investor lending, she said the bank was not concerned with its book being too heavily weighted to investors, stating that the bank wanted to “continue to grow that portion of the book, because I think that’s a portion of the book where we can deliver for brokers, and also it gives us some financial benefits as well”.
Speaking to The Adviser, she said that brokers had been a “major customer in terms of the loan growth”, suggesting that the bank was well regarded by brokers for its “consistent time-to-yes”, which she said gives “confidence to brokers and customers”.
“I think that is important to us, being able to give brokers confidence to their customers. So while we are starting to innovate in space, it’s just about being boringly consistent,” George said.
The AMP Bank CEO said that examples of the lender’s innovation included its recently launched 10-year interest-only loan, its easing of self-employed income information requirements (reducing tax return requirements from two years to one), and looking at “new opportunities where [AMP Bank] can be different”.
George added that AMP Bank’s “competitive rates” had also been contributing to loan book growth, as a result of a new funding avenue from its new digital offering, AMP Bank GO, which launched in February 2025.
The digital bank had secured $123 million in transactional balances and approximately 7,500 customers as at 30 June 2025.
“The whole proposition of AMP Bank GO was to diversify the funding so that we could lend more efficiently in the mortgage space,” George told The Adviser.
“We can leverage off the benefits we’re getting from funding to be able to lend competitively in that mortgage space.
“So I think our loan growth does, at the end of the day, come down to the rates we’re able to offer.”
The bank’s credit quality remained strong, with 90-plus days mortgage arrears at 0.88 per cent.
New broker platform set to launch
Looking forward, the AMP Bank CEO noted that the bank was expecting greater growth in 2H25, as it fully rolls out its new end-to-end loan application platform for brokers.
The platform, which has been in trial with at least 50 brokers, will go fully live across all aggregators on 14 August.
It aims to address common pain points in the home loan process and make it quicker and easier for brokers to facilitate mortgages.
George said: “I definitely see the platform improving flows, because the feedback from brokers has already been phenomenal… this is unique. It is giving them confidence, almost immediately, that they can say to their customers that they’re going to get a loan (at least for those ones, which are simpler).
“So I do think it’s going to help us.”
She flagged that the lender would also continue to innovate in the pre-retiree and retiree space to “serve the retirement goal of AMP customers better”.
“So we’re going to continue to innovate in that space. So that’ll be incredibly important,” she said.
“But all of our mortgage lending is about how do we make a broker’s life easier? And that’s what this particular deployment of the new system was about. That was what the 10-year interest-only loan was about. And we’ll continue to innovate in that space. And I think because we’re smaller, we can do that. We can move more quickly.”
New board member
AMP Limited has announced that Andrea Slattery will be retiring as an independent non-executive director on 31 August 2025, after six years of service on the AMP Limited and AMP Bank Boards.
AMP chairman Mike Hirst thanked Slattery for her contributions, including her industry experience and ESG knowledge.
Given Slattery’s departure, the company has also announced the appointment of Linda Elkins, an experienced wealth platforms and superannuation industry executive to the AMP Limited and AMP Bank Boards, effective 1 September.
Elkins has previously served as the national leader, asset and wealth management at KPMG and as executive general manager for Colonial First State.
Hirst welcomed Elkins’ appointment, highlighting her extensive experience as being of “tremendous value” as AMP continues to focus on the growth of these key businesses.
[Related: AMP Bank unveils broker platform]
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