Good morning and welcome. My name is Joseph Healy. I'm the CEO of Judo Bank and also one of the co-founders. I'm joined this morning by our Deputy CEO and CFO, Chris Bayliss. Chris is also a co-founder of Judo. We're delighted to be presenting our first set of results as a listed company. A set of results which we are enormously proud of. Those who have followed us closely will know that we barely listed the company just 4 months ago. This was actually 2 years ahead of schedule, given that we had grown much faster than we'd anticipated back in 2015, 2016 when we were architecting the business. Our agenda this morning is that I will firstly provide a company update. Chris will cover the financials in some detail, and I will come back to discuss the outlook.
We'll have plenty of time at the end where we look forward to hearing your questions. Let me start with a quick recap on the Judo journey from a PowerPoint to a profitable and scalable bank. The concept for Judo was developed in late 2015 and early 2016 in response to what we saw as a market failure in the provision of credit to the SME economy. This created the opportunity to build a new bank with a clear and motivating sense of purpose, to be the most trusted SME business bank in Australia. Since late 2016, the Judo journey has been one marked by milestones and achievements, including the granting of full banking license less than three years ago.
Our lending book today is now over AUD 5 billion, as Chris will talk through it shortly, demonstrating significant growth during what has actually been a very low credit growth environment. Much of that lending growth has been achieved during the COVID period since March 2020, and so we've taken risks with our eyes wide open. We have now established Judo as a credible alternative to other banks with a clear and sustainable differentiated proposition. Today, we're even more convinced there's a significant growth opportunity, notwithstanding the renewed focus on the SME economy by other banks. Our business model is truly unique, unlike any other bank in Australia or for that matter, globally. We are the only specialist pure-play SME bank in the market. We believe passionately that specialists outperform generalists through delivering superior service and superior business economics.
As a listed bank, we're also unique in the sense that we have a founder-centric internal culture. We think like owners and take a long-term view on Judo success. We are a relationship-centric bank committed to the craft of SME banking, enabled by a legacy-free operating model. We're also passionately committed to the four Cs in our approach to assessing credit risk. The four Cs being character, capacity, capital, collateral, and we emphasize those four Cs in that order. Before turning to the result highlights, I'd like to remind you of our medium-term at scale targets, which we shared with the market at the time of the IPO. We believe these metrics represent an at-scale sustainable bank which will deliver ROE in the low- to mid-teens, given our standardized model for risk weightings. We are fully confident that we will achieve these metrics and continue to grow beyond.
We have no aspiration to be the biggest SME bank in the market, but we do have an aspiration to be the best. In fact, we have a vision of building a world-class SME bank. In terms of our metrics to scale, today's results demonstrate that we're very much on track. Turning to the highlights of the results, we have strong momentum across the business with our lending book having grown 38% in the half to 31 December. Reflecting the benefits of being a pure SME bank with a strong relationship ethos, we have the highest Net Promoter Score of any listed ADI by some distance. In contrast to industry trends, our net interest margin has increased in the half by 8 basis points, and we've enjoyed improvements in our funding costs, which has been aided by the S&P investment-grade rating that we obtained back in November.
Despite strong competition, our front book margins remain resilient. Importantly, our credit quality and provisioning remains very strong. We're deeply committed to sound risk management, which we see as fundamental to banking. These results reflect what we call the Judo philosophy of Judo Bank, which I'll come back to near the end. Let me spend a moment on COVID. Largely due to Omicron, January culminated in a period of significant disruption to the economy. During January and February, we have been able to complete a full portfolio review, speaking to every one of our lending customers. Our ability to do this highlights the benefit of having a low customer-to-banker ratio. Currently, our bankers look after approximately 25 customers per banker. Our customers have told us that they are experiencing significant challenges, be that in supply chain issues, staff shortages, and growing inflationary pressure.
However, the feedback has resoundingly been that our customers are in good financial health. Out of our 2,200 lending customers, no one has asked for any additional support, and only a handful have indicated that they may need assistance in the coming months. On that positive note, let me hand to Chris to run through our financials in some detail. Chris.
Thank you, Joseph. Look, as Joseph has already said, we really are delighted to be releasing such a strong set of results today with good momentum in the business, which pleasingly has continued into the start of 2022 as everyone slowly returns from summer break. As you can see, the headline result is a pro forma PBT of AUD 3 million for the half, primarily driven by significant month-on-month lending growth with NIM as well as expenses comfortably in line with our prospectus forecast. We really do believe this demonstrates a clear pathway to achieving our full-year prospectus guidance of AUD 6 billion for GLAs.
As you will see from our January run rate for net interest income, the bottom right of this slide, we are confident we will exceed revenue and profit guidance for the full year. The operational leverage in our business implied by the 30% cost to income metric at scale is now starting to come through, with CTI dropping 15% half on half, maintaining our trajectory to the June prospectus guidance of 78%. Pleasingly, this will also absorb any performance-based employee remuneration resulting from profit outperformance. In fact, AUD 2 million of that potential cost has been accrued into these first half expenses, which is important to note when making comparisons to the prospectus forecast. Our statutory NPAT is a loss of AUD 16.1 million for the half. The difference, of course, being the one-off costs associated with the IPO at AUD 23 million.
I'll actually take this opportunity to confirm that all IPO costs are now final, and there should be no additional costs in the second half. A detailed reconciliation is included in the appendix of this presentation. In terms of the detail, I'll start with lending growth, as this is clearly the number one driver of our ability to meet metrics of scale. GLAs were AUD 4.85 billion at the end of December, up from AUD 3.5 billion in June. An increase of 38% for the half, as Joseph's already set out. We did, of course, provide our January lending update just a few weeks back, a result we were delighted with. January is seasonally the lowest growth month of the year for business lending.
However, now that period is behind us, momentum has returned, as I said earlier, and I'm pleased to report that as at last night, the lending book is now AUD 5.1 billion. The average size of new loans remains just over AUD 2 million. As Joseph's already said, we're pleased to see just how much COVID has reinforced with customers the true value of a relationship-led proposition. We really are more confident in that than ever with lending growth in all products and geographies. As I mentioned at the time of the IPO, a strategic focus for the business is to increase the portion of our asset finance lending, which generally delivers higher margins. As a percentage of the whole, we are pleased that this book has increased from 5.5%-6.2% during the half.
We also want to highlight that AUD 350 million of our book now represents loans written under the government's SME Recovery Loan Scheme, as we're very committed to showing our support for this important government initiative. Finally, a comment on our lending pipeline, which remains strong at AUD 1 billion. Our pipeline is a good proxy for our next 3 months of settlements. Hence our confidence confirming the AUD 6 billion full year guidance, with some insurance against any residual uncertainty relating to COVID. We also expect a further tailwind will be an economy delivering the strongest SME lending growth in 14 years. Turning now to the key enabler of loan book growth. This is primarily driven by the capacity to increase the size of our relationship banker portfolios, augmented by the continued recruitment of more bankers across our 13 different locations.
Pleasingly, both these metrics are showing good momentum. We do continue to attract the top talent in the market, and as an update to the slide on screen, we will have 95 relationship bankers at the end of February. Our prospectus target was 98 for June, which you should now interpret as a floor, not a cap. As shown on this slide, at the end of December, our bankers had on average just 25 customers each. At maturity, we expect this to grow to between 40-60 customers, which is of course, very low compared to our peers. This is our high touch relationship model and the essence of bringing back the craft of relationship banking.
Finally, we also wanted to draw attention to our increasing number of analysts, which now stand at 39, as in many respects, these individuals are serving their apprenticeship to become our next generation of homegrown relationship bankers, truly aligned to the Judo culture, CVP, and credit risk appetite. Over the next few slides, I'm now going to talk about the various components of our NIM. Consistent with our prospectus, we are reporting NIM and underlying NIM. Now, just to reiterate, underlying NIM is not a measure of the NIM excluding the TFF. The difference between the metrics is the cost of our TFF preservation strategy. Now, this strategy preserves an amount of TFF funding at 10 basis points, which we have initially secured with Treasury securities, which are being progressively swapped out with self-securitization assets as the lending book grows.
The variance between NIM and underlying NIM will unwind by the end of the calendar year and will result in the two metrics converging, when the NIM will rise up to align with the underlying NIM. In the intervening period, underlying NIM is the key metric to focus on, representing essentially the spread between lending and funding. Now, having said that, we clearly acknowledge the underlying NIM benefits from TFF funding. In fact, AUD 1.2 billion at the end of December, which has actually increased to AUD 1.5 billion today, and we know this is temporary. The TFF delivered a 19 basis point improvement to the first half underlying NIM.
Now, this benefit will get bigger as we utilize more of the TFF to our preserved amount of AUD 2.9 billion, which will see the NIM increase to reach mid-3s before finding its post-TFF sustainable level above 3%. And this of course is our metric at scale guidance, and we show that waterfall in more detail in the appendix for these slides. Now on the slide on screen, we've shown the drivers of underlying NIM over the half with an 8 basis point improvement to 2.73%. This is above our prospectus guidance for FY 2022, which was 2.69%. Given we continue to draw on our preserved TFF balance, we expect underlying NIM will continue to rise in the second half and hence exceed previous guidance. Next are lending margins.
Now as a business, we're focused on both our back book and front book margins, which we report here in quarterly breaks. The reason for this is as the book seasons, we expect front book margins to always be slightly higher than the overall back book. Front book margins are now showing stability at 4.5% for the October to December quarter, which is pleasingly above prospectus guidance of 4.3%. Our AUD 1 billion of pipeline talked about earlier is priced at a margin consistent with recent settlements at 4.6% in December and January. Now this is slightly higher than the back book and hence we expect overall lending margins to remain stable for the rest of FY 2022. I also want to take this opportunity to emphasize our significant positive bias to increasing interest rates.
91% of our lending book floats off one-month BBSW, while a significant portion of our funding is fixed, the TDs, plus of course, the TFF itself. Our liquid assets will also reprice upwards as rates increase. Now as a guide, we estimate that a 50 basis point increase in one-month BBSW would deliver an immediate increase of 25 basis points to underlying run rate NIM, which then tapers as the term deposit book reprices. We also believe our credit processes, which include a 200 basis point serviceability buffer for new loans, limit the downside from rising rates for the asset side of the balance sheet. Next now onto funding costs. This is an area of the business which has significantly increased in depth and sophistication in line with our growth ambitions.
The blended cost of funds has continued its improving trajectory, falling from 170 basis points in December 2020 to 130 basis points in June, and now 100 basis points in December. While the continued replacement of the preserved component of the TFF with self-securitization notes has been a material tailwind, the crucial contributor to the improvement has been the normalization of direct retail TD rates, which have fallen significantly from 180 basis points in June 2020 in the height of the first COVID wave to 90 basis points in recent months. Our investment-grade credit rating from Standard & Poor's has also, as expected, enabled access to new forms of funding, which we're now leveraging. Specifically, during the half, we undertook our inaugural senior unsecured bond for AUD 80 million at 95 basis points over BBSW.
As of today, we've issued close to AUD 200 million of NCDs at an average margin of 19 basis points and average duration of 3 months, which there continues to be significant demand for. We've also seen a significant uplift in our intermediated middle market deposits as a result of the credit rating. We will, of course, continue to leverage these channels and develop new products to further reduce our funding costs over time. Given our rapid growth in the lending book, we do understand there is a significant focus on how we are diversifying our sources of funding. Long duration term deposits remain our primary source of funding, and so it is important to recap on the math supporting this assumption. The total deposit market Australia is AUD 3 trillion made up of at call, transaction accounts, and TDs.
As we've set out previously, we do not currently access the AUD 2.2 trillion of deposits in the at call and transaction accounts. However, the term deposit market alone is AUD 800 billion. Now, this system turns over 2 times per annum. In fact, every 5 months to be precise. The overall retention rate is about 75%, meaning 25% churns. This is the rate sensitive market, a net contestable market of AUD 400 billion per annum for us to tap into. Our funding strategy and NIM assumptions include the ability to have the highest rates in the deposit price comparison tables. In fact, for the first half we've been ranked either 1, 2 or 3 for all TDs over 9 months in duration, and we're delighted to have also won 8 awards.
I think the key point here is that our funding needs over the next five years do not exceed more than 2% of the total TD market, and we have the ability within our NIM guidance to price for flow as required. As you would expect, we have considered whether the TFF refinance date in June 2024 will change the dynamics of our TD pricing strategy, but we don't believe it will. Most of the TFF is drawn by the majors who do not typically compete in the best buy tables. Interestingly, there was a recent RBA report suggesting they will be replacing their TFF in the wholesale credit markets, which is our view also.
Our main TD competitors, the branchless banks, have only modest TFF allocations, and so we do not believe the dynamics of our primary part of the market will change. Having just spoken to the size of the TD market, it's clearly not appropriate to be reliant on just TDs. We have significant focus on diversifying our funding sources to ensure security and duration of funding while also optimizing the cost. As discussed at the time of our listing, we have commenced a review of our numerous warehouse facilities to significantly increase capacity on improved terms and pricing. We expect the completion of this review that these facilities alone will be able to accommodate the entire refinance of our TFF allocation if required. However, concurrently, we're also building out channels to include other forms of funding that you would expect for scale ADI.
Specifically in the next 12-18 months, we will be an active market participant in the public debt capital markets. I think it's also important to note that in accessing this channel, we will leverage our triple-A rated notes backed by Judo SME loans, which currently secure our TFF funding. Turning now to credit quality. We wanted to start with a particular focus on COVID, as we are a dedicated SME bank. Per the slide, our exposure to directly impacted sectors is less than 9% of the total portfolio. Pleasingly, COVID-impacted sectors are performing in line with the overall portfolio. However, just to be conservative, we've also strengthened provisioning levels on these sectors, being circa 10% higher than the overall book. Although all the evidence suggests that our customers continue to adapt and are in very good financial health.
Our relationship-led model has actually enabled us to check in with all our customers since the beginning of the year to understand any adverse impacts from the Omicron wave, whether it be on supply chains, staffing levels, or of course, the prospect of higher inflation or just any other forward-looking challenges. As a result, we have a very good understanding of how our customers are performing. The punchline is confirmation they remain in good financial health, which we believe is validation of our four Cs approach to credit and the quality of our bankers. No customers have asked us for additional support since the beginning of January, and encouragingly, only a handful have said that they may need assistance in coming months should there be any more COVID related setbacks. The reality is that we're small enough to be able to dynamically adjust our risk settings.
Our four Cs approach to credit origination, focusing first and foremost on character, allows us to back winners in all sectors. We're proud of the fact that we will take a view and back people we believe will be good operators regardless of the state of an economic cycle. Now to impairments, provisioning and arrears. Our impairment expense for the half was AUD 9.6 million. We continue to benefit from no write-offs since we wrote our first loan nearly 4 years ago. The impairment expense is simply a reflection of our growth and a corresponding increase in our collective provision. Provision coverage is now more in line with our prospectus guidance for June. The fall in coverage reflects new loans making up a higher proportion of the total book, and that we provide less for recently written loans, as you would expect.
Our prospectus forecast for FY 2022, impairment expense was AUD 28.5 million. This included a AUD 10 million budget for write-offs, which was our expectation at the time of writing the prospectus. While some write-offs in H2 are likely, in reality, we think there is a low likelihood of the full AUD 10 million being consumed. As at the 31st of December, we had just seven customer groups that were impaired, totaling AUD 10 million. Outside of these, we only had six customers in arrears. In fact, three of these customers rectified their accounts in January and are now up to date. Now on to operating expenses. We are of course, continuing to invest heavily to drive growth, primarily in people, making up 60% of our cost base. IT expenses are pleasingly only growing modestly, showing the real scale leverage of cloud-based technology.
Our prospectus did flag that short-term incentives would be funded from our performance, and so they are not included in the prospectus forecast cost base. Again, as I mentioned earlier, we have accrued AUD 2 million for STIs in the for staff STIs in the December half. Full year expenses will be above prospectus. However, given that this will be entirely funded by excess revenue, there is no change to CTI guidance for the full year. I should of course stress that any bonus payments are of course subject to approval from the board at year-end. As you'll see from the slide, our CTI improved by 15% over the half from 98% - 83%, and as I said, remains on track to hit 78% at year-end. Finally, a few words on CapEx.
Capitalized project costs are running moderately below budget as projects continue to ramp up. That said, technology investment is a major focus for us moving forward, and we will catch up quickly in the FY 2023 financial year. Now to my last slide, which is focused on capital. Our CET1 capital at just over 20% remains the highest of any listed ADI, with our capital since June 2021 benefiting from a 5% increase from the IPO primary proceeds and our round 5 private equity raise. Lower risk weightings are a positive tailwind, largely as a result of our support for the SME government guarantee scheme. I talked earlier to this, and this will actually continue into the second half. This downward trend will continue a path to risk-weighted assets at 85% or less once APRA's new capital framework comes into force this time next year.
Over time, and consistent with our metrics at scale assumptions, we expect our capital levels to find a place between the regionals and the main bank capital ratios. We are a standardized bank with higher risk-weighted assets than the majors. However, we also understand the need to remain very well-capitalized high growth company. In this regard, we believe we have sufficient capital to fund our organic growth to the metric at scale guidance without the need for any future equity capital. Now I'll hand back to Joseph for his conclusions and outlook.
Thank you, Chris. That was excellent. I'd like to reiterate what I said earlier, that we are really proud to present what we see as a high quality set of results. Before I turn to the outlook, I'd like to spend a moment on our culture and our people, because this is what ultimately differentiates Judo from the rest of the industry. It makes us a unique bank, both in an Australian context and we believe globally. Judo is a bank with a very strong sense of purpose, and we built the business from a PowerPoint guided by that sense of purpose. We believe that financial results are the byproduct of a great culture, a great strategy that's superbly executed. Culture, however, is the key determinant for building a sustainable, differentiated, successful business. The management guru, Peter Drucker, once famously said that culture eats strategy for breakfast.
We have a purpose-built culture where our people are passionate about banking the SME economy. We monitor our employee engagement with weekly pulse checks, and tracking these over time provides us with almost real-time feedback on how our people are feeling. This has been particularly invaluable during the lockdown periods that we've all had to endure over the last couple of years, and also in the Judo context, particularly helpful given that some 40% of our staff have actually only been with the company for less than 12 months. Very important to our culture is the fact that we are founder-led, and we are committed to deepening that equity ownership within the business. There isn't a banking model like Judo in the market, and we believe that our culture shapes the business in quite a fundamental way.
Critical to that culture and in any organization, in fact, is the tone and leadership from the top. We're fortunate to have a very strong leadership team with deep domain experience and expertise. Everyone in the leadership team has a meaningful equity interest in Judo. We have also considerable depth throughout the organization, and we are confident that the future leadership of Judo is largely already inside the company. We will continue to develop our people and cultural propositions so that our people feel that this is the best company that they've ever worked in. Our employee value proposition is critical to our success. We believe that the war for talent is, if not more so, as big as the war for customers. Importantly, we will continue to emphasize quality over quantity in hiring staff into Judo. I'll come back to this in a moment.
Let me just turn now to the outlook. On this slide, I've included some of our key areas of focus for us over the next 12-18 months. We've achieved a lot in a very short timeframe, but we believe that we're still a very young company, and there's a lot for us still to do. One of the priorities is to start building specialization in sectors like agri and health. I'm delighted to let you know that we have just recruited 2 senior bankers to head these specialist areas. We will also continue to expand the business geographically. While strongly committed to broker relationships, we also have a goal of growing our direct business with a target over time of a 50/50 split between broker introduced and directly sourced business.
We're also looking to add to our product capabilities through organic build and potentially partnerships with specialist providers. We will continue to diversify our sources of funding and look to optimize pricing again. However, risk management will be central to our approach to liability management. We will continue to drive recruitment of quality bankers as well as technology specialists. In hiring bankers, we'll continue to focus, as I mentioned, on the quality, not just the quantity. It's easy to hit quantity targets. The challenge is to do so without compromising the quality of people that join the company. We also want bankers who are technically competent in the craft of SME banking and have a strong sense of credit risk management. Important to our future potential, we will prioritize our continued investment in technology in what is today a legacy free environment.
As I say, a lot to do, but there's a very exciting journey in front of us. Next to the macro environment, the business community always faces some uncertainty in an election year. The complexity of 2022, however, is further underlined by the undoubted challenges that many businesses face in managing supply chain bottlenecks, labor shortages, often critical skill shortages in certain segments of the economy, and of course, the reemergence of inflationary pressures. These are very real, and we have been working very closely with our customers to make sure that their business plans reflect these challenges. Given the inflationary build-up in the economy, we expect that the RBA cash rate will increase during 2022, and we're forecasting that will increase to 1.25% in, by the fourth quarter. However, despite the challenges, the outlook for business lending is very positive.
We are expecting business credit to grow this year by close to 9%. This will be the strongest system growth we have seen in well over a decade. In terms of the outlook for Judo in 2022, we see a continuation of the momentum evident in these results. We are reaffirming our confidence in hitting the financial year 2022 target of a loan book of AUD 6 billion, and we expect to modestly exceed our revenue and profit forecasts. We are confident that as a well-capitalized bank, we are well-placed to fund our current organic growth plans. In terms of the business model, as Chris mentioned, we have a strong positive leverage to a rising interest rate, with 91% of our loans on a floating rate.
We will continue the increased investment in technology that I mentioned, which is a priority for us. In summary, we feel very confident about the prospects for the business that we have built and continue to build. We love the clarity of our purpose, which will always act as an anchor no matter what market conditions present. Our purpose will also act as a filter through which we will evaluate strategic options. We believe that Judo can make a real difference to the SME economy, given our unique and pure play specialist characteristics. We know how to run the bank, a banking business and deliver growth and margin and manage risk. The emphasis on the 'and' economic formula is important part of our philosophy in an industry that historically has traded off margin or risk in order to grow.
We will never compromise on risk management in achieving our targeted outcomes. We are, and we will remain a pure play SME bank. We deeply believe that specialists always beat generalists, both in superior customer service and in business model economics. Finally, and most importantly, we have a great team at Judo. I want to thank everyone and congratulate the team for all of their hard work. They should be enormously proud of their achievements and very excited about the future. This brings us to the end of the results presentation. I want to thank you for listening. It'd be great to hear any questions that you might have on what I hope you will all agree has been an impressive debut set of results.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Jarrod Martin from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Thanks, and congratulations on your first set of results as a listed company. Joseph, Chris, you've painted a picture of, you know, you've got really strong loan momentum, AUD 5.1 billion now. You're at AUD 1 billion in the pipeline that you said sort of three months draw down. You know, six billion at the end of the year looks conservative. Your margins are better.
than expected. Yet your guidance is just for a modestly higher profit before tax outcome, which implies that second half expenses are going to be substantially up. If you could give us, you know, am I interpreting that correctly? Because it seems that expenses must be significantly higher in the second half for profit to only be up modestly for the year.
Well, Chris, I'll pass to you in a second. I mean, one of the things about forecasting the loan book in this environment is just the uncertainty of things happening, I mean, such as what we're seeing unfold in Russia and Ukraine. The environment we just took the view that the environment still has the potential for volatility, and that we should be cautious in the way that we think about momentum. I mean, that's an overriding remark. When it comes to the operating expenses.
Yeah, I know. Jarrod, we will be in line with Prospectus forecast for operating expenses, with the exception of the short-term bonus payments, which, as I said, we've taken an AUD 2 million accrual, in the first half. The Prospectus flagged that there was the potential for short-term bonus payments of up to AUD 4 million for the full year, but they would be entirely funded out of our performance on the revenue side, and that is still our position. Our costs, excluding short-term bonuses, will be in line with Prospectus, hence we are continuing our guidance of 78% for the cost-income ratio in June.
Okay, thank you. That's useful. The second question, if I may. You spoke about BBSW up 50 basis points, 25 basis points immediate impact to NIM, but tapers. What does that taper to? Are you ultimately a permanent beneficiary of increasing interest rates, or does that 25 basis points taper ultimately to zero?
No, it's a great question, Jarrod. If you go to slide 33 of the deck, where we've put together a waterfall in terms of taking you from the 2.73% underlying NIM that we've just announced to show how we get to the above 3% NIM in terms of our metric at scale, which excludes the TFF, so absolutely no reliance on the TFF in there at all. You can see that one of the bars on that waterfall is the prospect of rate increases. You're right that the tapering, obviously, you know, once rates become flattened out, then that tapering obviously does come back to zero. But we will be a permanent beneficiary on our liquids book.
You know, we're holding significant amount of government instruments for our liquidity book. We'll be a permanent beneficiary on the equity that we hold. You know, we've got AUD 1.5 billion of equity. I think all of our experience tells us that, you know, spreads between lending and deposits widen also with increasing rates.
As Chris mentioned, we've got 91% of our book is priced off 1-month BBSW, and the average duration on the deposit book is about 9 months. You can do the math. We're repricing the deposit book on average of every 9 months, and the lending book in a rising rate environment will get repriced every month.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Jonathan Mott from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, I've got a question on slide 14. I was looking at the front book lending margin, and you can see there for the period, say the quarter to December 2020, it was at 4.9%. Then it fell pretty steadily down to 4.3%, then it's jumped back up, I think, the month of January saying 4.6%. That's quite a substantial movement. I had a couple of questions regarding that. You said that there was a lessening of competition in the last couple of months. We haven't heard that from any of the other major banks or any of the banks, that there's been a lessening of competition. If anything, they're saying it's going the other way. I'd like you to elaborate on that.
has there been a change in loan mix, in any of the underwriting standards? Is there any other reason to explain quite a substantial expansion in the front book margin over the last four months?
Well, there wasn't, I mean, as we've analyzed, there's been no fundamental change in loan mix or product mix or risk appetite. We did see an easing of competition, you know, that is only for a period of time, and it's only to that that we can point to in explaining that difference. There's no change in strategy, change in risk appetite, change in loan mix. Simply, we put down that change to just the nature of competition. I take your point.
Okay. Well
I take your point that certainly, you know, we discussed this yesterday actually as a board, competitive pressures are quite intense. You know, that has been the case over the last 6-9 months.
I think, John, this is where we get the benefit of our, you know, differentiated CVP. You know, the banks, you know, are extremely competitive for those, you know, highly secured deals that sail through, you know, the bank's credit policies and automated algorithms or scorecards. Where they might be writing deals, you know, at 2.5 or 3%. You know, we play our own game, as you know. You know, we have a very differentiated CVP. It, you know, it's really anchored around those highly experienced, highly trained relationship bankers that can make fast decisions. As Joseph said, the numbers are the numbers. You know, the full settlements in December and January were 4.6%.
Our entire AUD 1 billion pipeline is priced at about 4.6%. Now, we do see the back book repricing downwards, which you would expect, because obviously as those customers mature, and obviously we will defend any competitive pressure on that back book. But you know, this really is, you know, it really highlights our CVP, where we're playing our own game.
Okay, can I just follow that up? You talk about the value proposition that you've had, but your front book margin's moving potentially 60 basis points in a nine-month period. When you're trying to get to a steady state margin of greater than 3%, yet your front book moves so quickly, shouldn't we be concerned about that? 'Cause it looks like some of this is just outside your control.
The margin management is totally in our control 'cause we sit down and review this every week when we look at the pipeline across the country. What loans are in the loan mix in terms of size and the margins that we are pricing loans at. There's good discipline in the business on pricing, actually. I think that these rates are within our control. Now, what you can find. Let's take WA as an example, and then South Australia is next. We've entered the WA market about 15 months ago, and the South Australian market about six months ago. It's eight months ago.
You can find that there's quite a lot of pricing pressure until you've established your relationships in the market. Transactions that fit the risk appetite can be quite aggressively priced. You know, once we've established ourselves in those markets, and WA being a case in point, Chris, correct me if I get it wrong here, but our front book margins in WA are now among the highest in the country. A year ago, that was not the case. We feel that our ability to manage our margins is actually a strength of the company 'cause our data, our MIS is available daily, but we sit down and look at it as a team every week rather, on a Monday.
If we start to see any weakening in margins in any part of the country, we would be straight onto the team.
Okay.
John, I
One minute. Yeah.
Sorry. I was just gonna say.
Okay.
I'll just highlight on page 33, when on that waterfall of today's NIM to the at scale NIM, you'll see we don't have a bar on there for, you know, increase or decrease in the overall book. We do see that 4.5% sort of our steady state now.
Okay. When we come back over the next, you know, year, 2 years, we should see that front book margin stable at around 4.5%, and you're not gonna let it get down to 4.3s% or anything 'cause you're controlling your NIM at that level.
We would see the front book margin always being slightly higher than the total book, because we see that the back book will, you know, reprice downwards as that book matures. You know, we've got a better credit history with those customers, et cetera, averaging 4.5%. You know, at the moment, front book's 4.6%, average book is 4.5%. That's the sort of trend that we would expect to continue, 4.6%, 4.5%, roughly.
Yeah. Because we do manage it, we're not caught by surprise. In fact, there have been several times in the last six months where we've had to intervene, not just on margin, but if we see a buildup, let's say, in particular asset categories like commercial real estate in certain geographies, we'll give instructions that we don't wanna see any growth, any more commercial real estate, let's say, in Brisbane until we want that portfolio rebalanced. We actively manage both the yield and the concentration and industry concentrations.
We're also, John, we're not gonna be used as bridging finance, right? We're not gonna do a deal, take a judgment on a transaction where maybe the other banks have not been able to do that or not as quickly as us. In two years' time, that customer becoming a highly attractive asset to the majors, and then that customer just leaves us. We're always, as you'd expect of a relationship bank, proactively relooking at the bank book to check that the margin remains appropriate so that we're not exposed to being used as short-term bridging finance.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Andrew Lyons from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thanks, good morning. Just a question on your rate leverage, on the back of Jarrod's question. It appears to suggest the initial TD benefit tapers over time to zero with permanent benefits from equity and liquidity. Can I just investigate that TD tapering a little more? Just given, you know, what we saw on TD rates as cash rates fell, should we not expect TD rates, particularly more price sensitive, higher TD rates, increase by more than the cash rate as we see cash rates start to rise? I'd expect that would actually become a margin headwind, which, you know, might somewhat offset some of those equity and liquidity benefits.
I mean, if we look over the last 10 to 15 years, the average margin over BBSW that the branchless banks have paid to be number one in the rate comparison site is about 80 basis points. You can see from our analysis that, you know, we haven't got to that point yet. You know, our front book TDs are around about 100 basis points. The overall book is around about 90, as there has been a significant downward trajectory. We still anticipate our natural place being at around about that 80. If anything, I think, you know, when the cash rate is, you know, 6 basis points. I think as rates increase, you would.
All my experience would suggest that, you know, we should be able to certainly maintain that margin, if not improve against it. Now, we haven't factored in any improvements on it. As I said earlier, the only sustainable improvement from rising rates is through the liquids and the equity because that tapering does obviously, you know, ultimately become zero once rates stay flat. We're certainly at this stage not concerned that we would see our TD rates going up, you know, above the assumption we've got at sort of 90 basis points.
As cash rates increase, you'd expect basically the deposit betas, the delta in your TD rates to be the same.
Yes.
as the cash rate. Obviously, there's a timing lag, which we understand. Is that correct?
That's correct. Yeah.
Okay. Okay, thank you. Just a second question just around the third party. Slide 11 suggests it's still 75% of your originations. I think over time, you've said previously you're targeting 50/50. Can you maybe just talk a little bit more about the competitive environment just in that third party originated space and what's happening with, I guess, fees that you're gonna have. You're having to pay away into that space at the moment.
Yeah. We're consistently over the 6-8 months, we've been either number 4 or number 5 of the banks in terms of allocation of broker business. We've stayed very strongly positioned in that broker market. Our plan is to manage the growth of both broker and direct so that over time we get to 50/50. We do see the broker market, as we've mentioned at the time of the pre-IPO, we do see the broker market growing from currently about 35% of flow to over time to 50% of flow. That growth dynamic, I think, is the momentum there. Therefore, we would target a share over time of 50/50. We do look at the key.
at the data from the key aggregators every month in terms of what share we are getting. As I say, outside the top three of the major banks, we can occasionally dislodge one of them as number four, but we're consistently number five. That's including Macquarie Bank in that mix. Our proposition resonates with the brokers that we have targeted and selected. We don't really see any change in that dynamic other than our strategic intent of growing our organic flow to that 50/50 target. Our proposition remains very competitive and we're comfortably number four or number five in monthly volumes through the major aggregators.
Thanks. The commissions in that, are they broadly stable? You're not seeing any real change in
No.
cost of that distribution?
No. No change.
They haven't changed since the day we launched 60 basis points upfront, 30% trial.
Yeah. 30 basis point trial.
Appreciate it. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Josh Freiman from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for the opportunity. Just a couple of questions from me. So just the first one's actually on your volumes. I noted you guys sort of have that commentary around the back book is expected to trend down from a lending margin perspective. You should be starting to see some of your business written a couple of years ago or three years ago start to roll off or mature. Are you able to give any clarity or color on the refinancing of your back book in terms of percentage of people that refinance back with you?
Our model assumption is that we would see a 20% churn. It actually is lower than that. It's materially lower than that. I think the figure's about 9%, Chris, is that?
Yeah, look, it does oscillate month-on-month, you know, depending on what's happening with our customers, if they've got large, you know, settlements of property sales or what have you. But as Joseph said, the modeling assumption from day one was 20%, and that's along with the team as well.
Yeah. The mix between natural amortization versus a refinancing is about 50/50 of that number. We monitor that. Again, we monitor that very closely. There's quite a bit of that. Natural amortization, as Chris mentioned, you know, business sells an asset or business cash flows just amortize the loan. We monitor very closely the refinancings out of Judo into another bank. That does happen occasionally. It's almost always on price. It's almost always to one or two of the majors. Right now, it's well within what we would consider to be satisfactory levels. Certainly way below the 20% assumption that we've got in the model.
Okay. Thank you. Just on the second question, some of your peers have mentioned inflationary cost pressures, specifically in hiring pockets around bankers and technology staff and so on. I'm just conscious with your high touch customer value proposition, this may be an issue. Are you guys starting to see inflationary cost pressures in terms of hiring new bankers and analysts?
Yes. There's no question about that. Labor costs have gone up. I mean, we've had several cases where we've actually agreed on a hire with a banker, and he or she has gone back and resigned and then suddenly been given, you know, a 20% salary increase. Those inflationary pressures are real. We've factored them into the way we've been thinking about the business. It's not only just in terms of bankers, where I think those salary levels are, it's double-digit inflationary pressure generally, but also in technology. This is an endemic problem across the industry. Just the shortage of supply of competent technologists has pushed those labor costs up quite high.
Want to repeat Chris's earlier comment that we're holding to our expense forecast. There is no doubt that labor costs are rising. I would anticipate when we kind of think about the next financial year that there'll be salary expectation adjustments being made, you know, assumed by, you know, people already inside the company that would be above levels that we've seen before. We're just gonna have to manage our cost base to make sure that we can absorb and protect our employees and because the cost of trying to replace somebody, of course, is a multiple of the cost of meeting the market in terms of new salary levels. Those pressures are real, no question.
Sorry, just a quick follow-up. Has that resulted in any churn in your banker and analyst book?
No. Not yet.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah, not yet.
No, as I said earlier, if anything, we will exceed. You know, we gave guidance of 98 bankers at the end of June. As I think I said in my presentation, you know, you should now consider that to be a floor, not a cap.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Brendan Sproules from Citi. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gents. Thanks for the opportunity to ask some questions. I just have a question on your non-TFF funding mix. I'm referring to page 15 of your profit results announcement, where you show us the mix here. There seems to be a big kick up in obviously CDs as well as the intermediated middle market sort of term deposits. You've seen quite a slowing in the monthly growth in the direct retail term deposits. I was wondering if you could give us a view on the outlook of that mix as we head into the second half, and will we continue to see this trend away from the direct retail into these cheaper form of deposits in the market?
Look, you're absolutely right in terms of the statements you make. I mean, we're really leveraging that investment grade credit rating now that we got from Standard & Poor's, which does mean that we've pivoted to more of the middle market, intermediated middle market, you know, where we are able to get significantly lower rates. Also, you know, doing the senior unsecured issuance late last year, that was an AUD 80 million bond at 95 basis points over swap. That wasn't particularly cheap versus our deposits, but we were really, you know, eager to demonstrate the funding options that we had in front of us.
The NCDs, you know, as I said, I think in my presentation, we've done nearly AUD 200 million of NCDs now, and the average margin on those on a straight average is, you know, 19 basis points. I think you will see us continue to do more NCDs in the second half. Whether we do any more bonds, I'll sort of keep my options open on that. I think, you know, we have got a significant amount of funding for the growth trajectory on the lending book to raise. I wouldn't see a significant change in the mix that we're revealing in these numbers now into the second half.
You know, over time, we will absolutely be dialing up NCDs. We'll do a public issuance on the senior unsecured. The warehouses will reprice downwards as well, but we're not really drawing on our warehouses at all. And obviously, you know, between now and the end of the calendar year, we will be fully drawing the TFF to the full AUD 2.9 billion.
Thank you. I just have a second question on slide 12, where you show us the build-up in your relationship bankers and analysts.
I mean, you talked about the productivity and wanting to drive the average assets under management per banker towards 100. To what extent will the second half be influenced by the fact that the net 20 growth in relationship managers that you saw in the June 2021 half are gonna be a lot more productive in their second six months with Judo compared to the first six months?
Well, there's no question about that. I mean, we find that on average, it's 4 months to productivity when we hire a banker. In other words, he or she takes the first 4 months to familiarize themselves with the systems, processes, building relationships. You start to see after 4 months and by, certainly by 6 months, that productivity starts to kick in. But the capacity from where we are today, you know, with an average of 25 customers per banker, with an average loan size that has been sticky at around AUD 2 million. You know, our bankers right now in the system, there is theoretical capacity for doubling the funds under management. That really reinforces part of our optimism about our ability to continue to grow.
As we add more bankers, which we will be, and as they get to productivity, it's gonna be a northbound trajectory.
Okay, thank you.
We've got time for one more question.
Your next question comes from Jarrod Martin from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Joseph, back in 12th January , to be precise, you were quoted in the newspaper just talking about the Omicron wave, and the worst is yet to come and it hasn't been felt on bank balance sheets yet. I wonder if you could sort of give us an update, considering you've been through your portfolio and how you're feeling.
Yeah.
About sort of the recovery versus some of those comments that, you know, were interpreted quite negatively at the time.
Yep. Well, I said in early December that I felt the environment was as positive as I'd seen it in a long time because business confidence had been growing and intention to invest had been growing. We got hit with Omicron, then we got into this whole situation that it was really unclear how long that was gonna drag out. People were quite exhausted, you know, having come through two years and having thought that in October, November, that we saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and then suddenly darkness kind of descended again. There was supply chain problems, lockdowns, borders. It was unclear as to when borders were gonna open. Restaurants were having to close or significantly reduce menus.
I'm using this as one example. In January, it did look rather pessimistic. The leadership, political leadership had just gone missing. I mean, there was the rollout of the RATs and other measures, the inconsistency between the states. I felt quite pessimistic in mid-January given all of that. That pessimism has lifted quite a bit. You know, I couldn't see leadership, and I couldn't see a light at the end of the tunnel in mid-January. I think those issues have largely gone away, and that's why despite labor shortages still being a big problem, inflation being a reality, and supply chain bottlenecks affecting a lot of companies, I think there's a more optimistic outlook now than there was back then.
Certainly that's what our customers are telling us. I mean, in January and in February, we spoke to every one of our 2,200 borrowers. You know, the feedback, we'd already mentioned some of the data earlier on. The feedback is that people were feeling in February a lot more confident about the outlook. They could see a light at the end of the tunnel that wasn't there in January, early part of January. A lot more optimistic. You know, I was just dealing with the realities of what I saw at the time. I do get reminded by a lot of people of that actually. You can only see what you see at the time. You know, it's...
For me, it was looking rather pessimistic, particularly given the lack of any real political leadership around solving some of these issues.
Cheers. Thank you.
Okay. Listen, thanks for that last question, Jarrod, and thanks to all of you for making the time to listen to our presentation and for the questions, which are much appreciated. I know there'll be follow-up meetings with some analysts later on, and we'll be meeting with our investors over the course of the next week or so. I hope that you found and no doubt you'll get a chance to dig deeper into the materials that we've released this morning. Hopefully, you will agree with us that this is a pretty impressive maiden set of results. We've delivered at least on what we said we would do, so there are no surprises there. We're very confident in terms of forward momentum that we'll meet the targets that we've committed to.
We're looking forward to, you know, ongoing engagement, and helping the market fully and better understand the Judo story and what makes this a very unique growth story, in an industry that is, you know, that doesn't have many growth stories. So on that note, thanks everybody, and enjoy the rest of the day.