Good morning, and welcome to the Judo Bank FY 2026 Results Webcast. We appreciate everybody accommodating the slightly delayed start time this morning. It has turned out to be a busy day on the market. My name's Andrew Dempster. I'm the GM of Strategy and Investor Relations at Judo Bank. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land from which we are all joining today.
For our agenda this morning, we're first going to hear from CEO, Chris Bayliss with an overview of our performance and some discussion on our portfolio. Our CFO, Andrew Leslie, will then run through detailed financials, and Chris will return to discuss our strategy and outlook. We will then open the lines for Q&A. On that note, I'll now hand to Chris.
Thank you, Andrew, and good morning, everyone. Look, it won't be a surprise that following our June announcement, we've spent considerable time engaging with the market. I think it's fair to say we've received numerous questions about the composition of our portfolio, whether the June event was isolated or evidence of broader deterioration, and ultimately, whether we remain confident in our through-the-cycle cost of risk assumption of 50 basis points.
Our goal is to answer these questions today, and to that end, we have included some additional slides in the presentation. We will, of course, also provide the usual detailed update on our financial performance and discuss the outlook. I'd like to begin with some reflections on FY 2026. It's, of course, important to acknowledge the increase in provisions we announced in June.
This related to three exposures, one large customer group and two smaller customers, and resulted in higher earnings volatility than we expect from the business. The two smaller customers are typical losses for an SME bank but were non-performing at the end of the year, which just didn't give us enough time to resolve them before the end of our balance date. Since then, we've undertaken a review of the exposures and incorporated learnings into our settings and processes.
We've taken targeted actions in the areas such as the detection of connected borrowers, valuation practices, and credit assurance, and the business is much stronger as a result. However, look, it's important to keep FY 2026 in perspective.
Two specific provisions, only one of which was discussed in our June update, accounted for 25% of the year's impairment expense, and they are not representative of the portfolio, which continues to perform in line with our expectations. I want to stress also, provisions are not losses. Both of these businesses are trading and the resolution process is ongoing. In particular, the larger customer group we referred to in our June update is starting to clear their arrears, and we have a good relationship with them.
Notwithstanding these provisions, as we go through our results today, you'll see we've continued to execute against our strategic priorities and deliver a step change in ROE. The fundamentals of our company remain strong. SME credit demand is robust, and we have a healthy pipeline and a strong competitive edge. Our bank is increasingly diversified and delivering significant operating leverage.
We continue to execute our strategy and have a clear pathway to delivering ROE in the low to mid-teens. Now to our financials. We've had another year of above-system growth in lending, with growth in the regions and agri outperforming the rest of the book, driven by the investments we've made over the last few years. Pleasingly, deposits have funded all lending growth, supported by our competitive pricing and the launch of our new at-call products, which have exceeded our expectations.
NIM has improved 20 basis points and is now above 3%, consistent with our long-run assumptions and expectations. CTI has improved substantially, and it still has a long way to fall, despite us already having the lowest CTI in the sector now. Cost of risk was higher, as I've already discussed, but ultimately, it came out at the low end of the range we gave in June.
As I just said, a disproportionate amount of the charge was consumed by two customers' files, which we believe have characteristics not generally present in the rest of the portfolio. PBT, notwithstanding the higher cost of risk, was still up 34%. Similarly, our ROE of 6.4% has again improved and will now continue to do so by about 100 to 200 basis points per annum. Moving now to portfolio composition. We continue to run our own race with a CVP of smarter judgment, faster decisions, and stronger relationships.
While the major banks are undeniably more competitive in SME, we continue to have a strong competitive edge. We exist to serve customers that do not fit through industrialized, one-size-fits-all credit assessment processes. That said, there is very little lending we do that the major banks would say no to.
Around 70% of our customers come to us from the major banks. Our model means we are faster and provide more tailored structures. We price for this service. We also price for differentiated risk. The chart on the top right demonstrates this. Our margins increase with risk, measured as PD. Importantly, our portfolio metrics remain aligned through our through-the-cycle assumption of 50 basis points of cost of risk based on a portfolio PD of 2% and an LGD of 25%. The bottom right chart shows average portfolio PD over time.
Despite strong GLA growth, average portfolio risk has actually been stable to lower, not higher. The key message is that we are generating growth by applying our credit capabilities in underserved segments of the market and generating margin with our service proposition.
In addition to managing risk at a transaction level, we also think about risk at a portfolio level. Since day one, we've consistently said that we are building a portfolio that mirrors the economy, with two exceptions.
Firstly, agri. We had a risk setting that the loan book had to reach a reasonable size before we could take on the additional risk from weather and commodity prices. Agri is however, a large part of the economy, and so over the last three years we've grown in a measured way. We've opened nearly all of our locations in areas where we are comfortable with the risk dynamics. We still remain underway to this segment at about 8% of our total portfolio versus 19% for the sector.
The second key exception is lending for construction purposes. While this is of course a major part of the economy, our exposure to this sector is largely services to construction, supporting existing customers or building their own premises, or some pre-development sites. We also have some exposures via our warehouse business, noting this is structurally more diversified and has a lower leverage point.
The other sector to call out is commercial property investment, distinct from construction. Our exposure has reduced from 20% to 17% over the last four years, as we have maintained a conservative stance towards property valuations.
Since the IPO, we have actually grown from approximately AUD 4 billion to a lending book of AUD 15 billion now, while expanding across industries, geographies, and customer segments. As a result, the key message is that the portfolio today is significantly more diversified than at the time of our IPO.
As we have diversified and grown, we have remained an SME lender. 98% of our customers have facilities below AUD 20 million. The growth in our balance sheet has, however, given us some optionality, and we do have a handful of larger groups, all family-owned, and most of whom we have banked for many years. We know them well, we understand their businesses well, and we have been willing to grow with them. This is exactly what we mean by relationship banking.
I will discuss our larger customers in more detail on the next slide, but in summary, they are lower risk and have more property security. This naturally implies that the smaller customers are the more cashflow-orientated, and this part of the portfolio is incredibly well diversified.
This really is our absolute bread and butter as a specialist SME lender, and while our four Cs approach to credit means we do not start with how much is your house worth, it is important to note that none of our lending is unsecured. We always have alternative security, such as a fixed and floating charge, and directors' guarantees. Our specialist model with experienced, empowered relationship bankers who have small portfolios means we continue to excel in this part of the market.
Moving to our largest customers. Whilst we must respect client confidentiality, it is important to provide some context behind them. First, these are overwhelmingly long-standing relationships. Around 80% of the growth in our customers above AUD 50 million has come from businesses we have supported over several years. As they have grown, we have continued to support them. This means we have a deep understanding of their operations, their management teams, and their trading performance.
Secondly, these customer groups are typically diversified businesses rather than single operating entities. Our largest customer group, for example, comprises six different trading businesses and nine different freehold properties. Across the six customer groups above AUD 100 million, there are 22 trading businesses and 33 properties.
Three of these groups operate in the hospitality industry, where they generally have multiple freehold assets and are managed by highly experienced operators. In several cases, these customers have banked for Judo for many years, including relationships that actually predate our IPO.
Third, our governance framework becomes increasingly rigorous as exposures grow. New to bank lending above AUD 50 million is generally restricted, reflecting our preference to support and grow with existing customers, as I said earlier. Any exceptions require senior executive approval and board oversight. Look, from time to time, we also see opportunities through our established banker relationships with larger businesses. These are subject to extremely rigorous credit assessment, and we completed only just one such transaction during the year.
Fourthly, we believe our relationship-led model is particularly valuable in this segment. Our specialist bankers manage relatively smaller portfolios and work alongside experienced senior credit execs. In sectors such as hospitality, we have built up significant expertise and have long-standing industry relationships and believe we have one of the most experienced business banking teams in the country.
Finally, it is worth noting that our approach to concentration has remained consistent as the balance sheet has grown. The largest single exposure has only occasionally exceeded 1% of our gross loans and advances.
As the balance sheet has continued to expand, we expect our largest exposures and the proportion of those exposures above AUD 50 million to remain stable or trend lower as a percentage of the portfolio. The key takeaway is that these exposures are generally long tenured relationships supported by diversified underlying businesses, strong governance, and very experienced sector specialists. They remain an attractive part of the portfolio. They generate strong returns whilst maintaining conservative structures and security.
I also want to make a comment on our relationship with brokers. In a market of over 22,000 brokers, we deal with less than 10%. These are dedicated commercial brokers who are largely ex-business bankers of the Big Four. We have a rigorous accreditation and ongoing monitoring process. On top of that, as we have talked about before, we launched our Black Belt program last year, and it has been an absolute roaring success.
These brokers represent the top 0.1% of brokers in the country, and our proposition with them is unique in the industry. These brokers are business banking veterans with an average of 22 years experience. W here 99.9% of brokers in Australia are paid commissions solely on volume, these brokers have to hit portfolio customer satisfaction metrics and risk metrics also. This group of brokers has generated growth above two times system, and throughout 2026, we did not have a single bad debt or single specific provision associated with any of these Black Belt brokers.
Now, before handing to Andrew, I would like to reinforce that we have multiple levers available to continue driving our ROE. Ten years into our journey, compared to other listed ADI peers, we have the industry-leading NPS, the highest PBT growth, the highest NIM, and the lowest CTI.
We also have the highest level of capital and the highest level of collective provisioning on a like-for-like standardized basis compared to the other listed banks. We have come a long way, and yet we just remain still only 2% of the market, so we still have significant runway ahead of us to manage growth, margins, cost, capital, and deliver strong operating leverage, and ultimately improve ROE by, as I said earlier, by about 100 to 200 basis points per annum. I will now hand over to Andrew, who will take us through the financials.
Thanks. Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. This financial year, Judo delivered pre-provision profit of AUD 286 million. This result represents 42% growth versus last year, well ahead of our original expectations and guidance. Growth, NIM, and operating leverage were all better than forecast. Earnings were also impacted by higher impairment charges. However, despite this, net profit before tax was up 34% year-on-year. Net profit after tax increased 29% to AUD 111 million, and EPS also increased 29% to AUD 0.099 per share.
Overall, return on equity increased 110 basis points to 6.4%. Over the next few slides, I'll walk through the key drivers of the result in more detail, starting first with NIM. This slide sets out the key drivers of net interest margin from December 2025 to June 2026. NIM improved from 3.03% in the first half to 3.23% in the second half, a better-than-expected result.
There were two material positive drivers denoted by the green bars. First, deposit margins, which contributed 16 basis points to NIM, with blended deposit costs improving as cheaper deposits written in the first half washed through the book. Deposit margins also benefited from the introduction of our at-call savings products, which allowed us to optimize our use of TDs during the period.
Second, the treasury portfolio contributed seven basis points to NIM due to tighter liquidity management and improved treasury yields. These large positive benefits were only slightly offset by two other factors. Lending margins saw a two basis points reduction to NIM. Average lending margins declined from 4.3% to 4.2% over BBSW, reflecting some competitive pressures and changes in the lending mix with a greater contribution from warehouse lending, which carries lower margins but higher ROE. Front book lending margins were 4.2%, compared with 4.3% in the first half.
Other cost of funding, including funding mix and the cost of wholesale funding, was a one basis point drag to NIM. While we benefited from favorable warehouse renewals and a higher proportion of deposit funding, this was largely offset by the full period impact of the Tier 2 issue completed in the first half and the AUD 750 million term securitization, which settled in June. Lastly, the equity component of funding. This had a neutral impact on NIM as the rising RBA cash rate was offset by our investment term of capital.
I'll now touch on our NIM expectations for FY 2027. We expect NIM to be broadly stable relative to FY 2026 of 3.13%. Term deposit margins are expected to normalize back towards our through-the-cycle range of 80-90 basis points over one-month BBSW.
At the same time, we expect lending margins to be moderately lower, reflecting both lending mix and ongoing competition. We assume continued benefits from tighter liquidity management with liquid assets as a proportion of GLA continuing to trend lower, and we continue to expect a higher portion of deposits in the overall funding stack. Taken together, these factors are expected to broadly offset each other, supporting a broadly stable NIM outlook for FY 2027.
Next, to deposits and deposit margins. We continue to grow and diversify our deposit franchise, supporting ongoing momentum in lending. The deposit book continues to perform strongly, with retail TD rollover rates increasing to 73%. As touched on earlier, blended deposit margins improved by 23 basis points in the second half to 69 basis points over one-month BBSW.
This was driven by favorable swap rate movements, which lowered the cost of term deposits originated earlier in the year, as well as the successful rollout of our at-call savings products. Looking at new term deposit pricing, the average margin on TDs originated in the second half was 71 basis points over one-month BBSW, benefiting from favorable swap curve conditions for most of the period.
As expected, term deposit pricing moved back to our through the cycle range of 80- 90 basis points over one-month BBSW towards the end of the second half, with margins at this level embedded in our FY 2027 guidance. I will now spend some time on our at-call savings offering, including the two new products that we launched in FY 2026. This is a great example of how the investments made in our technology platform directly support our long-term funding strategy.
We successfully launched two new savings products during the year, the Intermediated Savings Account in October and the Direct Online Savings Account in February. These products were launched as part of a deliberate strategy to diversify our funding base, doubling our addressable deposit market beyond term deposits. Importantly, they give us greater flexibility in how we manage term deposit flows and pricing, optimizing overall funding costs. While still early in the life cycle of these products, we are pleased with the initial results.
Customer adoption has been strong, with the majority of balances coming from new-to-bank customers. We expect benefits to continue to build as balances grow and customer cohorts mature over time. Looking ahead, we continue to see significant opportunities, including product enhancements and channel expansion.
Our overall objectives remain unchanged: to diversify our funding base, increase funding optionality, and improve funding efficiency as we continue to grow our balance sheet. Let us now look at the overall funding stack. We continue to progress towards our at-scale funding mix, with deposits now representing 71% of total funding. Just as importantly, we continue to strengthen and optimize our wholesale funding. During the year, we completed a AUD 150 million Tier 2 issue, which priced 120 basis points tighter than our previous transaction.
In addition, we successfully completed a AUD 750 million capital relief term securitization, which priced 102 basis points tighter than our inaugural transaction in 2023. We are very pleased with this result. Beyond the pricing outcome, the strategic significance of this transaction is that it provides capital relief and is highly accretive to ROE.
We would like to complete these types of transactions annually as we continue to scale and optimize the balance sheet. Turning now to operating expenses. We delivered material improvement in our cost-to-income ratio during the year, which reduced from 52.4% in FY 2025 to 45.3% in FY 2026. This is a very strong result and demonstrates the operating leverage inherent in the business as we continue to scale. Total operating expenses in FY 2026 was AUD 237 million.
The largest contributor was employee-related costs, reflecting continued investment in customer-facing roles and some insourcing of IT roles, normal wage inflation, and growth in the business. FY 2026 saw higher amortization expense, reflecting the full run rate of prior investments, which was largely offset by lower IT costs. Other operating expenses increased, driven by growth-related activity and inflation. Looking ahead to FY 2027, we expect positive jaws to drive ongoing improvements in the cost-to-income ratio.
We plan to invest in customer-facing capability, new products, and productivity initiatives, with other costs growing largely in line with inflation. Turning now to asset quality. 90+ days past due in impaired assets increased to 2.9% of GLA at year-end, which includes the two larger impairments previously discussed. There are several key trends beneath the headline numbers worth highlighting.
First, early-stage arrears improved significantly during the year, with 30- 89 days past due loans reducing to 0.39% of GLA, down from 1.04% a year ago. This improvement was driven by customer cures, repayments, and refinancings. However, this metric can be volatile, and we are not declaring victory.
Secondly, trends in asset quality are mixed across different sectors. As shown on the bottom chart, elevated impairment levels continue to be focused in a handful of industries rather than being evident across the broader portfolio. We have applied targeted management overlays to the more challenged sectors.
Finally, during FY 2026, resolutions were higher, partly offsetting new impaired asset formation. Next, impairment expense and provisioning. FY 2026 impairment expense increased to AUD 118 million or 88 basis points of average GLA. This primarily reflected higher specific provisions on new impairments, together with a more cautious outlook for certain sectors facing continued challenges. Our provisioning approach remains prudent.
Collective provision coverage increased to 0.93% of GLA, up from 0.89% in December, whilst the average PD of the performing portfolio remained broadly stable. Collective provision coverage reflects five key factors. Firstly, portfolio growth and changes in mix, with new originations representing a material portion of current exposures. Secondly, customer attrition, disproportionately in higher risk categories.
Thirdly, general seasoning of the loan book, including customers migrating from the collective to specific provision buckets. Fourthly, updates to forward-looking macroeconomic scenarios, including incorporation of an oil shock in the downside scenario.
Finally, a vulnerable industry overlay reflecting heightened risk for sectors experiencing challenging operating conditions. Stepping back, at 1.11% of standardized credit risk-weighted assets, Judo continues to hold appropriate levels of provisioning for our loan book. Finally, to capital. We continued to maintain a strong capital position with a CET1 ratio of 12.4% at June 2026, above our target management operating range of 11%-12%.
During the second half, the movement in the CET1 ratio was impacted by three main drivers. Firstly, lending growth, which was the primary consumer of capital at 110 basis points. Secondly, organic capital generation, which continued to grow and contributed 40 basis points of capital in the half, supported by rising profitability. We expect this trend to continue as operating leverage builds.
Thirdly, the capital relief term securitization transaction, which contributed 60 basis points of capital. These transactions are highly accretive to ROE, demonstrating our ability to drive both capital efficiency and balance sheet scale. We have multiple levers to support growth while maintaining strong capital levels. With a CET1 target range of 11%-12%, we now have the flexibility to consider a range of capital management initiatives in due course. Thanks again, folks, and I will now hand back to Chris.
Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Andrew. I want to start my wrap-up with the service profit chain, which remains core of how we operate the bank. Engaged employees will deliver very satisfied customers. These build your brand and, in turn, deliver great results for shareholders. Our employee engagement remains strong and has improved over the year, which is pleasing when scale often does the opposite. This has actually translated into even happier customers, with our lending and deposit NPS remaining sector-leading.
For me personally, I'm delighted we've been able to improve all these metrics as we've scaled, reflecting that this philosophy is well and truly now embedded into our DNA. The resulting ROE and EPS improvements show the model is working. ROE has improved 110 basis points year on year, and our EPS is up 29% year on year. This is our strategy that we continue to execute.
We are growing and scaling our business, leveraging the strong foundations we have built. Growing our total addressable market remains the personal priority for me as CEO as we build out more and more diversification. Looking forward, we want to increase other operating income, reduce our cost of deposits, and enable our employees to innovate and drive more productivity. There are huge opportunities for us to consider how we support much smaller micro-businesses with a better lending proposition for those customers that want to borrow below AUD 1 million. This is still a gap for us.
In addition, there are opportunities to improve our working capital facility, our receivables finance proposition, and whether we want to enter trade finance. Collectively, these segments are accretive to ROE through higher margins and higher fees.
We remain confident in our thesis of building a bank that can generate an ROE in the low to mid-teens at scale, and we have lots of opportunities ahead of us. In the near term, we have several strategic priorities aligned to growth, margins, operating leverage, risk management, and capital efficiency. On growth, we're making ongoing investments in banker enablement, consolidating our position in the regions, and having a truly sector-leading broker value proposition with our Black Belt brokers. To drive margins, we will continue to invest and enhance our deposit offerings.
Combined with growth and margins, investment in productivity will continue to underpin the delivery of operating leverage. This work capitalizes on our strategic, flexible technology platforms, with AI solutions having an increasingly important role to play. In terms of risk management, in FY 2027, we are deploying new monitoring and early warning alert technology that will complement our existing detective controls.
Lastly, we will continue to actively manage capital with all our available levers to support growth and ROE. Turning to the economy. We understand the broader economic outlook and trading conditions for SMEs are mixed, and businesses are operating with uncertainty about the future. Businesses also continue to be constrained by capacity shortfalls across the economy, in particular, skilled labor.
This is an incentive for SMEs to invest in productivity-enhancing initiatives, including automation, technology, and operational efficiency, which is supporting the ongoing demand for business lending. We have a clear role to play in this productivity agenda, providing the capital SMEs customers require to invest and grow.
There are also much longer structural shifts occurring as baby boomers enter the retirement phase and succession planning becomes a priority for many businesses. Now to our metrics at scale. We have spoken about these metrics for almost five years since the IPO, and they have been a very useful framework for demonstrating the economics of a specialist SME business bank. Today, we are either at or approaching many of these metrics, and we have always been transparent that we would achieve the metrics at different times.
We are now effectively at the low end of the GLA metric, and we have achieved the NIM metric. Our focus from here is clearly on achieving our CTI, which will largely be a story of revenue outpacing costs, as Andrew said earlier, positive jaws.
On cost of risk, we remain confident in our through-the-cycle assumption of 50 basis points as we continue to scale and as our loan book seasons. Notwithstanding the potential for volatility, 50 basis points is supported by the current portfolio PD and LGD that I referenced earlier. Our ultimate goal, of course, is to deliver sustainable ROE in the low to mid-teens . These metrics are the key levers we have as a bank. We will dynamically manage them to deliver strong growth and economics, and going forward, our guidance will consequently focus on ROE. N ow to specific FY 2027 guidance.
With respect to growth, we are continuing to scale and will deliver disciplined above-system growth. As I said on my previous slide, trading conditions for SMEs are mixed, so we remain eyes wide open to the risks in the environment that we are certainly not underestimating.
NIM is now above 3%, and as Andrew said, we expect NIM to remain broadly stable. On costs, operating leverage really is now our best friend. Whilst, as I said earlier, we already have the lowest CTI in the sector at 45%, the nature of our cost structure means that this will continue to fall. We have already discussed cost of risk in some detail, and our guidance for next year is to be broadly consistent with FY 2026 in percentage terms.
All of this confirms the guidance that we gave in June for strong PBT growth to AUD 210 million-AUD 220 million next year. Most importantly, ROE will be circa 8% next year, another significant step closer to our at-scale target. In closing, I want to acknowledge again that the provisions we announced in June were disappointing and unacceptable volatility.
We have undertaken a number of reviews and have embedded the learnings. However, I hope our presentation today has demonstrated that we have strong underlying momentum in the business. We remain agile, and we are adapting to the operating environment. As discussed earlier, we already have the highest NIM in the sector with the lowest CTI in the sector.
We are very well capitalized with strong provision coverage versus our peers on a like-for-like basis. This means we have all the foundations to keep increasing scale, maintain strong margins, and continuing our operating leverage to remain firmly on track to deliver sustained ROE expansion with PBT growth of 34% this year and a further 25%-31% next year. Thank you for your time. That concludes the presentation, and we now look forward to your questions.
Thank you. To ask a question, please press star one, one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, press star one, one again. In the interest of time, please have two questions per person. If you have more questions, you can press star one, one to re-queue. We will come back for more follow-up questions if time permits. Please stand by as we compile the Q&A roster. First question comes from Matthew Wilson from Jarden.
Yeah, good morning, team. Matt Wilson, Jarden. I hope you can hear me okay.
We can. Thanks, Matt.
It is great to be able to grow with your customers, but we thought that was sort of AUD 3 million to AUD 35 million in credit loans. Looking forward, where should we now draw the line? It does appear that SME is evolving at the margin to corporate, and whilst the averages look manageable, it is the fat tails that are getting larger that may trip you up. Can you sort of comment on that?
Yeah, absolutely, I can. I think, as I said, at the scale that we're at now, the tail will start to reduce. As we said in the presentation, our over AUD 50 million loans, which are only 19 customers, are 10% of the book, and that will start to reduce now. Scale really becomes our best friend. I think the point to make, Matt, is 98% of our customers are borrowing less than AUD 50 million or less than AUD 20 million, which is exactly in line with the guidance we gave at the time of the IPO. Of course, the IPO was five years ago now.
We had a book of AUD 4 billion now; we have a book of AUD 15 billion now. We very, very seldom do we onboard a brand-new customer above AUD 50 million. The customers start below that figure, but we want to support them as they grow.
We don't want to be a lender that says, "I'm sorry, we can't support your growth, and you now need to go to one of the major banks." 80% of all of the growth in those larger customers has come from existing relationships, and most of those customers we've had as customers for many, many years. In fact, one of our largest customers has actually banked with us for nearly seven years now, since before the IPO.
Secondly, thanks for that clarity. Has APRA's attention been raised by the impairments that took place in June, in particular, we'll call it loan number three, if you like?
No.
It might be 10% of the book, but one bad loan is 30%-40% of your core profit.
Yeah. That loan had particular circumstances to it, Matt. It was not originated as a large loan, as I said. It was originated as an AUD 15 million loan initially. W e had some aggregation issues there, which we have talked to before. The nature of that risk is not prevalent in the rest of the portfolio.
I would stress again that provisions are not losses, and these provisions were raised right at the end of the year when we did not have enough time to work with the customer in terms of a resolution. That particular customer, we do have a constructive relationship with. It is just a provision. I n point of fact, they are making progress to clear the arrears. I think they are separate issues, Matt.
Our large loans are the most well-secured loans in the portfolio. They are the best understood. They have the highest level of property security coverage. The entire portfolio is no more than 70%-75% of the property value associated with that entire portfolio.
No worries. Thanks, team.
Thank you. Due to the amount of questions we have, please have one question only. Next, we have Tom Strong from Citi.
Hi, Tom.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. Good morning. If we look at the two problematic loans that popped up in the June half that were quite, I guess, idiosyncratic risks around customer concentration or what questions are being at the time of origination. Can you just tell us what kind of broader review you have done around your origination practices to make sure you are capturing all of these risks appropriately, given they are quite specific and hard to extrapolate across the book?
Yeah. As I said, the three loans that we talked about in June, two of them were relatively small customers. They are losses in the ordinary course of business. It is just that they happened very late in the year, and we did not have time to resolve them before the balance date. There was one big one, which was the one I have just addressed with Matt, and that really was an issue with aggregation. Since then, we have tightened up all of our controls around that, and we are comfortable that we have no other exposures of that nature in the book.
When we referenced the two large loans this year represented 25% of our provision coverage, there was an earlier loan, a large loan. That we have tightened up. That was a specialist asset in a scale-up type of business, and we have changed our valuation practices with regards to those types of deals. Again, we're comfortable that there are no other deals in the portfolio that have those characteristics.
Great. Thanks. I guess there are two specific examples around related customers and valuation practices. Are you confident, I guess, on the settings across origination outside of those two very quite specific risks?
Yes.
Thank you. Just a moment for our next question, please. As a reminder, please have one question per person. Next, we have Andrew Lyons from Jefferies.
Yeah, thanks, and good morning. I'll just ask a question that relates to Andrew's slide, just on capital. You speak in the final bullet point just around, in a position to, or you sort of speak to potential to consider capital management initiatives in due course. Can you maybe just talk in a little bit more detail about what that might look like, but particularly, what are the yardsticks that you'd need to sort of reach in relation to your capital generation, to actually start considering those capital management initiatives?
Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. The first and most important one is that we've now put out a target operating range for the CET1. This is something that we announced back at the end of June. That's an important first milestone for us, and that's 11%-12%. We've kind of put that on the table now as a formal range.
Where we landed for the full year, 12.4%, that's clearly above that range, and that's really why we've made that comment around the ability now to start thinking about capital management initiatives. That could be a range of things. First and foremost for us, we're a growth business, 42% PPOP growth. Growth is always going to be a top of list in terms of how we think about management of the overall capital.
C learly also for us, as the operating leverage comes through, as the ROE increases, there's an ability for us to start thinking about other capital options such as dividends and the like. F or us, the most important milestone was the 11%-12% operating range. I think with where we landed for the year, and the levers that we demonstrated during the year, in particular the term securitization, which is an important part of that annual plan. We'd like to make that an annual part of the plan for us. That just gives us a lot more flexibility now in terms of management of the capital stack.
Thank you. Just a moment for our next question. Next we have Andrew Triggs from JP Morgan.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Could you elaborate, please, on the comment for the FY 2027 outlook for discipline above system loan growth? Given the pipeline looks quite robust still, is the comment about better managing risk, capital, or margin? Noting that in the past, I don't think Judo's always sort of known or been certain on what the best mix of those three things are.
Yeah, Andrew, I will take that. Thanks for the question. Look, it reflects risk, if we are honest. As I said earlier, the economy has taken some big hits recently. We think businesses are still very resilient. Personally, I think system growth is going to drop from, I think in many respects the data is showing it is about 10% at the moment, but I think it will probably drop to more like 7% or 8% growth. We are a high growth bank. We are certainly not going to grow below system. We are just going to keep our powder dry for exactly how much growth we do next year.
It is certainly not capital constrained. It is certainly not constrained in terms about where we play in the market. W e just felt that it was inappropriate to box ourselves into very specific guidance on that other than making it clear that we intend to grow above system.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next, we have Jonathan Mott from Barrenjoey.
A question on page 19 or presentation slide 19, where you give us the new additions and resolutions just come through. If you look at the last quarter at AUD 183 million, annualize that, it is about 2.5% of gross loans. It is not actually that unusual. You have been there on a couple of other quarters in the past, second quarter 2026, first quarter 2024.
I s this just a bit of natural volatility that you are seeing in the book, a few more large non-performing loans coming through, and it was just more of an unusual timing? Or are you actually calling out that you are getting more worried about the quality of the book as a whole, given the economic outlook? I f you can also comment on how you are seeing it play out for the first six to seven weeks of this year.
Do you want to?
Yeah. I'll start, John. Yeah, look, I don't think there's anything particular to call out there. On slide 19, obviously, those numbers are and have been, as I called out, we've seen more of those cures, repayments. I think that's really just a reflection of where we are. There's nothing particular to kind of call out there apart from just noting that the volumes were a bit higher during the year. I mean, we do actively manage the book.
As I noted, a lot of the stock, if you like, has come from new originations. We did manage some customers out of the book that were in disproportionately higher risk categories. That's something that we've always kind of done as we've needed to.
As for lead indicators, John, our watch loans are down, our close monitoring are down, as Andrew put a data point in the slides that our 30 to 90s are down quite considerably. Look, we're plagued by the law of small numbers. We're still subscale in that regard, so we're certainly not declaring any victory. That said, I think SME balance sheets are in good shape.
There are definitely some significant headwinds. It's going to impact system growth next year. We're 2% of the market. We get to pick where we play and how we win. We're going to be very eyes wide open. There's no lead indicators at the moment that are causing us any material concerns.
Thank you. Next, we have Jason Shao from Macquarie.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just a question on margins. You are talking about margins to be broad flat in FY 2027 on FY 2026, and depending where you exit this half, it probably suggests that your exit run rate in second half 2027 is probably close to around 3.05 or maybe just a bit above that, which is obviously quite a bit of a slowdown from where it was this half. Could you just comment a bit about your expectations for that decline between deposits and lending, please?
Yeah. Thanks, Jason. I will start with that. Yeah, look, we had a very strong print for the second half, 3.23%. I was going back over history and remembering that we provided guidance initially for the second half that was 3.1%, and then we upgraded it to 3.15%, and then we upgraded it to 3.2%, and now we have printed it at 3.23%. What has driven that? It has really been the very favorable deposit pricing environment, which has really been a swap rate story, and we have talked about that pretty consistently over the year as we have seen that trend come through, especially in that second half.
What have we seen in terms of those, the exit or the run rate, I guess, coming out of the June quarter? We have seen that NIM come back, and it is really just come back because of this normalization of deposit costs.
We started to see that probably a bit later in the piece than we thought, which is why we were able to upgrade that NIM. W e have seen the deposit costs kind of come back into that 80- 90 basis point range. Now, that is all been part of our plan. It is embedded in our guidance. It is not down at the level you said. I think you said 305. I think you gave me a figure. It is higher than that. I t will kind of normalize down, as we have said, to the level that we delivered across the full year. FY 2026 at 3.13%, we are going to be kind of around that level for FY 2027. I t is really just a normalization of deposit cost story.
Thank you. Just a moment for our next question, please. Next, we have Brendan Sproules from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Brendan from Goldman Sachs. Thanks for taking my questions. First question I want to ask is, you have guided next year to similar basis points of bad and doubtful debts around 88. Could you maybe give us a bit of color on, is this really driven by further increased provisioning, or do you think next year, just given the mixed outlook, you are going to get a year where write-offs as a percentage of your average GLA are actually higher than your through-the-cycle assumptions?
Yeah, a couple of things, Brendan, that are driving that guidance. Firstly, as we said when we provided it, we wanted to be conservative for FY 2027 given the experience in FY 2026. T he macro we have taken into consideration, as Chris mentioned, there is some mixed signals there. Then thirdly, I guess, the FY 2026 experience being driven by these, in particular, two large loans, which we think are idiosyncratic. T hat is, I guess, some qualitative around the guidance for next year.
We have given the guidance statement about broadly consistent in terms of percentage terms. How to think about that? We have got a CP coverage, which we anticipate will be around the levels that we have ended for June. Then we have got an SP rate that we have effectively carried through based on FY 2026 into FY 2027 in terms of a pretty crude kind of bottom-up in terms of how you can think about that number. T hat is really the basis for the next year's cost of risk guidance.
Points. Chris, as you mentioned, provisioning is not the same as write-offs. What do you think is, I guess, the longer-term provisioning that you would have to add each year that we should also incorporate when we are thinking about the longer-term returns of this business?
Well, the guidance that we've given, 50 basis points, has always been at scale. There will be a point at scale where if we are growing literally at system and we are not outperforming system, we do not have a disproportionate impact from collective provision build on the growing book. Then specific provisions, there is always going to be some recovery. You are always going to get an element of cure. You would expect specific provisions to be slightly higher.
Ultimately, the 50 basis points is pointing to an underlying loss rate. At scale, we would expect our specific provisions to be slightly higher than that with an assumed cure rate, leading to underlying losses of 50 basis points.
Thank you. Next, we have Richard Wiles from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Chris. AUD 50 million loan is more than 2% of your ordinary equity. To put that in context, Judo having an AUD 50 million loan is like a major bank having a loan of well over AUD 1 billion. Why should you have any loans of this size, irrespective of the quality of the borrower and the amount of security? Are not they simply too big for a bank of your size? Given you have said you are 2% of the market and you get to pick where we play, why do you need so many of these loans? I would like to understand your thoughts on that, please.
Sorry, there was a little bit of crackle there, but I think I got the question. I think we have got to keep this into context. Over AUD 50 million loans is 19 customers out of a portfolio of 5,000 customers. 98% of our customers are absolutely in our sweet spot of between AUD 2 million and AUD 20 million. That is where we excel.
We are going to have customers that we have onboarded at a lower amount that are in growth mode, and we get a choice, right? We get a choice. Do we just say to them, "Sorry, we are capping out at 20. If you want to buy another business, you are not for us," and lose that customer to a major bank? Or do we grow with them?
For us, where we know the customer really well, where we have an established track record, many of our bankers know these customers for many, many years, well before their lives with Judo. These are generally customers that have come to us direct, and we get a choice. Do we grow with them, or do we let them become customers of the major banks?
For 19 customers, we have decided to grow with them, and we understand them really well. We think it is an effective use of our balance sheet. We get good returns on them. They are very well secured. As per in the slide, we show the security coverage. We do not take unsecured cash flow risk on these loans. As I said earlier, the overall portfolio is more than adequately secured by commercial property. It is not a big part of our business, but we believe we are comfortable with the concentration risk associated with it.
Thank you. Next, we have Nathan Lead from Morgans.
Good day. My question is just around the capital relief term securitization. Y ou said that that added 60 basis points to your CET1, and you intend on doing these transactions annually. Can you just talk through, they are not free, so what sort of dilution does it do to the NIM? I suppose, if you are intending on going back into that market, do you think that your profile, your reputation in the debt capital markets were damaged by the loan issues you had at the end of FY 2026?
Yeah. Look, thanks, Nathan. This is a really important part of our capital story, and we were very pleased with that transaction, which I talked about. What's the economic impact? The first part of your question. Look, at the end of the day, the benefit of these is that whilst it is an element of a funding nature, because we sell all of the notes of these securitizations, it means that we don't have to hold regulatory capital against them.
It's effectively we're getting call it 250 basis points net. If you take our lending margin over swap and take the cost of these, in the high 100s off that, then we're getting 250 basis points of NIM, for no capital. That's the power of this from a kind of a balance sheet velocity perspective and ultimately an ROE perspective. W e think they're very attractive.
Look, pricing can move. We did the last transaction in what was a very good market. Market conditions can change. 250 basis points is still attractive when you're plus or minus on the pricing. We still think that we have good access to this. It was a big step up from the 2023 transaction, as I said, over 100 basis points tighter in terms of pricing. I think the other thing with this is, this is a structured product. Investors here come in, they get a loan tape, they do the DD, they know what they're getting.
I t is a very well-informed instrument in terms of the performance and the economics. Y eah, having now done that second transaction, and really broadened the investor base of that, because it is a new asset class, SME assets in this structure for the market. We're very happy with that, and we want to make it part of our annual plans going forward.
Thank you. Next, we have Ed Henning from CLSA.
Thanks for taking my question. I just want to circle back on the large exposure. You said you're working through it at the moment. Just on the preliminary findings so far, is that working towards where you've taken the collateral haircut or working towards the actual initial collateral backing you had pre-haircut? Then if you just go to your slide where you talk about your bigger exposures and you talk about your property collateral there, are you mark-to-marking that regularly? Obviously, with prices falling, I'm just interested how you're thinking about that.
Yeah. No, thanks, Ed. Look, in the confines of client confidentiality, it's difficult to get into specifics, but we are more than comfortable with the provision that we raised on that loan. We were in a constructive dialogue with the customer, and the market value of those properties that we have as security would mean that we would not have a loss. I think that's all I can say.
We have specific requirements under prudential standards with regards to how we raise provisions and when we raise provisions, and that was all part of the disclosure that we gave in June. With regards to our large customers, absolutely. These are managed by specialist bankers with very, very small portfolios. We would always have line of sight with regards to what's happening to property valuations.
A lot of them, we said that we have a particular expertise in the hospitality business, with obviously pubs as the underlying security there. W e're always reevaluating. Often those files would be subject to, say, quarterly review in terms of monitoring governance, et cetera. They are the most well understood, most well managed by the most highly skilled bankers with very small portfolios, and we know those customers intimately.
Thank you. Next, we have John Storey from UBS.
Hey, thanks very much. Hopefully, you guys can hear me. The line's being a little bit crackly on the call. Andrew, I wonder if you could provide a little bit more detail just around the early-stage arrears, which have decreased significantly. I'd be interested to understand if this is a genuine kind of underlying improvement in asset quality. If you could just provide a little bit of detail around what percentage is being refinanced, cured, and then the repayments. If there are any conditions that have changed just around the curing, it would be useful. Thank you.
Yeah. Look, as I said, these numbers can be volatile, but we have seen some encouraging signs in terms of some of those early warning indicators. The 30-day to 89, as I said, has improved from 1% down to just under 0.4%. Chris also talked about close monitoring, which we've seen, as well, trend down, as well as the level of the book that's in watch. It can move around, and you see that in some of our metrics. I t is part of, I guess, how we've thought about the provisioning for June 30 and also how we've thought about guidance for next year.
Just the percentage that's been refinanced of the reduction that you've seen?
Say that again, John.
The percentage that has been refinanced of the reduction.
It is a portion. As I said, if you think about stock and flow, and we provide in the back of our presentation, the statistics, as we always do in terms of attrition. You can see that does move around a little bit. A ttrition for this year overall has been about in the mid-20s, so just under 25% for the year. We had a bigger, which we called out in the first half, where we were seeing much higher levels of attrition. That dropped right back in the third quarter and came up a little bit in the fourth quarter. T hat gives you the data behind the overall movement in the book.
Thank you. Last question comes from the lines of Brian Johnson from MST. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to ask a question. Chris, just looking at it and listening to what you have said today, it is not apparent to me that you have really communicated as to why these big loan losses came through during the period. I still do not understand how, if you are so close to the customer, it basically suddenly went from performing to not performing. The subset of that question is, if I have a look at slide 26, I can see that we have still got quite strong credit growth.
I f I have a look at input costs, particularly for small companies, which are sharply higher, and we know these small companies cannot pass it on, does not this actually create an increased credit risk profile going forward? W hy did we not know about the large ones? Then if I have a look at slide 26, why is there not a problem with these input costs rising for small companies that can't pass them on?
Yeah. As I said, the three loans that we talked about in June, two of them are losses in the ordinary course of business. We did not have line of sight because they both had circumstances associated with them where there was no line of sight. One went into voluntary administration. That would've been a buildup of overdue creditors or tax or what have you. There's lots of components to the working capital cycle of a business that, as a bank, you don't always have complete line of sight of.
Then on the other one, it had personal circumstances related to it, which is completely inappropriate for me to talk further about. The larger one, as I said, we had an aggregation issue in that we were not looking at it as a group. We were looking at them as standalone businesses.
It was the nature of the group that would've given us deeper insight and would've allowed us to see potentially earlier that there was an underlying cashflow issue that wasn't manifesting itself in the individual companies. T hat we've improved our processes around that, and we've double-checked that we do not have any other files in the portfolio where we have an aggregation issue. I'm comfortable that that was an unacceptable loss. Well, sorry, an unacceptable provision, as per some of the earlier questions that I've answered on that.
Provisions are not losses, and that customer is working with us to catch up on the arrears, and we hope to have a good outcome on that. With regards to the overall business conditions. For you to assess today. We really do appreciate you spending the time with us. Thank you for all of your questions.
As I said, we are incredibly proud of the bank that we have built. We have some of the leading metrics of any ADI in Australia now. It's the 10-year anniversary of Judo. We're still only 2% market share. We have a very bright future in front of us, and we look forward to updating you more fully on that at our AGM in October.