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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Commonwealth Bank, which holds more Australian home loans than any other lender, published its results for the year to 30 June 2026 on Wednesday 12 August. The bank's ASX announcement puts home loan arrears at 0.73 per cent and says it made more than 147,000 tailored payment arrangements with customers during the year. The Nightly, reporting the result the same day, adds that the arrears figure stood at 0.63 per cent in December and that mortgage applications have fallen 15 per cent since May.
For a Queensland borrower the result is the widest window available on how households with a mortgage are coping after three cash rate increases in 2026. The bank does not publish its figures by state, so what follows is a national picture, read with the Queensland evidence published in the days before it.
Commonwealth Bank full-year results announcement, 12 August 2026, and The Nightly's report of the result on the same date.
What the bank reported
The headline numbers are large. Cash profit after tax was $10,982 million, up 7 per cent on the previous year, and the bank declared a final dividend of $2.70 a share, taking the full-year dividend to $5.05. The announcement says the bank grew at or above the rate of the whole market in each of its five core domestic products, home lending among them, and that it helped customers buy more than 150,000 homes in the year.
The same document carries the figures that matter to someone with a loan. The net interest margin, the gap between what a bank earns on loans and what it pays for deposits and funding, narrowed to 2.05 per cent, three basis points lower than a year earlier. A basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point. The loan impairment expense, the charge a bank takes for loans it expects not to be repaid in full, was $788 million. The Nightly reports total impairment provisions of $6.5 billion against a mortgage book of about $680 billion.
Related readPre-approval explained: what a conditional approval is and is notOn the outlook, the bank's wording is careful. Its announcement says housing activity has softened from a high base and that application volumes appear to have stabilised in the weeks before the result. Chief executive Matt Comyn is quoted by The Nightly: "Growth is slowing, with higher interest rates and inflation placing uneven pressure on household incomes and economic activity."
How to read an arrears rate of 0.73 per cent
Banks count a home loan as in arrears when a scheduled repayment has not been made. The figure usually quoted, and the one in this result, is the share of loans 90 days or more behind, roughly three missed monthly repayments. It is a late signal. A household under pressure cuts spending, draws on savings and speaks to its lender long before it reaches that point, so the 90-day rate describes strain that began months earlier.
On The Nightly's figures the rate rose by a tenth of a percentage point in six months, from 0.63 per cent in December 2025 to 0.73 per cent in June 2026. Put another way, about 73 loans in every 10,000 were three months or more behind at the end of June, against 63 at the end of December. The direction is clear and the level is still small: more than 99 loans in every 100 were not in that position.
Two other figures in the coverage explain why a rise in arrears has not become a rise in forced sales. The Nightly reports that nearly 85 per cent of the bank's home loan customers are ahead on their repayments, meaning they have paid more than the minimum over time and hold the difference in redraw or an offset account. It also reports that across the mortgage book customers owe about $41 for every $100 their homes are worth. A borrower with that much equity who can no longer manage the loan has the option of selling and clearing the debt, which is a hard outcome but a very different one from owing more than the sale price.
Related readHow lenders work out borrowing capacity: income, expenses, bufferChief financial officer Alan Docherty, in The Nightly's account, described the stress the bank sees as sitting in pockets of its customer base, which is a way of saying the average hides a wide spread. The households most exposed are those who borrowed close to their limit, hold little in savings and have had a change of income.
Payment arrangements are counted separately
The 147,000 tailored payment arrangements are a different measure from arrears. An arrangement is an agreement between the lender and a customer to change repayments for a time: a pause, a reduced amount, a longer term. It covers every kind of credit the bank offers, so the number is not a count of mortgages, and the announcement does not split it by product.
Spread over a year, 147,000 arrangements works out at about 400 a day. A customer on an arrangement who keeps to it is not treated as being in default, which is one reason the two figures can move differently: a lender that agrees to more arrangements early may record fewer loans at 90 days later on.
The figure sits beside two readings published the week before. The Adviser reported on 4 August that the credit bureau Equifax recorded a 5.3 per cent rise in mortgage hardship cases in the June quarter, and on 5 August that the Australian Financial Complaints Authority received 119,949 complaints in 2025-26, with complaints about financial difficulty up 17 per cent. Three sources that measure different things point the same way: more households are asking for help, and most are asking before they fall far behind.
Related readLenders trim variable rates days before the June Reserve Bank meetingApplications are down, and investors lead the fall
The second story in the result is demand. The Nightly reports that mortgage applications to the bank are down 15 per cent since May and that applications from investors have fallen 28 per cent. May is the month the Federal Budget announced changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax, in a quarter that also brought the third cash rate increase of the year.
Commonwealth Bank is not alone. Westpac's third-quarter update, lodged with the ASX on Monday 10 August, reported average monthly mortgage applications 11 per cent lower than in the previous quarter. Since the Budget the bank's monthly run of applications has been about 20 per cent below the level of its second quarter, with investor applications down 26 per cent and owner-occupier applications down 18 per cent. Westpac put its stressed loans at 1.19 per cent of the total and its housing lending growth for the quarter at 2 per cent.
| Measure | Commonwealth Bank | Westpac |
|---|---|---|
| All applications | -15% | -20% |
| Investor applications | -28% | -26% |
| Owner-occupier applications | Not reported | -18% |
Commonwealth Bank figures as reported by The Nightly, 12 August 2026; Westpac third-quarter update, 10 August 2026. The two banks measure over slightly different periods.
An application is the first step of a loan, so these figures run ahead of the official lending statistics, which count loans once a lender has committed to them. Fewer applications in June and July mean fewer settlements in the spring.
The Queensland reading
No bank result says how Queensland borrowers differ from the rest, but the evidence of the past fortnight gives the outline. The Equifax figures reported by The Adviser on 4 August showed the average amount Brisbane borrowers enquired about falling by $15,000 in the June quarter, the largest drop among the capitals named. Cotality's index, published at the start of August, had Brisbane home values down 0.6 per cent in July after a long run of growth.
Related readWho passed on the rate rise, and when: BOQ first, big four on 9 OctoberQueensland came into this year with some of the fastest price growth in the country, which cuts two ways for a borrower. Those who bought several years ago hold a large cushion of equity and are well represented among the customers the bank describes as ahead on repayments. Those who bought near the top of the market did so with large loans at rates that have since risen three times, and have had little time to build a buffer. The bank's own phrase about pockets of stress fits that split.
The Reserve Bank left the cash rate at 4.35 per cent on Tuesday 11 August, the day before the result. A hold does not lower anyone's repayments, but it means the 0.73 per cent figure was not about to be tested by a fourth increase taking effect in September.
What a borrower can take from it
A bank's annual result is written for shareholders, and three points in this one are still useful to a customer.
- Arrangements are routine. A lender that makes about 400 a day has a process for it. Asking early is the pattern the industry itself now describes, and a request for a hardship arrangement is a right under national credit law, whatever the lender.
- Competition has not gone away. A narrower margin means banks are earning less on each dollar lent, partly because they are pricing sharply to win and keep good borrowers. With applications down by 15 to 20 per cent, a lender has more reason, not less, to keep an existing customer who asks for a better rate.
- Equity is the quiet protection. The figure of $41 owed per $100 of value is an average across a very large book. A borrower's own position depends on when they bought, how much they put down and what has happened to prices in their suburb since.
None of this is advice for an individual loan, and the right step depends on the household.
The dates that follow
The other major banks report on different calendars. ANZ's third-quarter update is due on 13 August and National Australia Bank's on 17 August, and each normally includes its own 90-day arrears rate, which will show whether a rise of the size reported here is common to the sector.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes its June quarter Lending Indicators on 14 August, the first official count of new loans by state for the three months that include the Budget. The Reserve Bank's Monetary Policy Board meets again at the end of September, with the minutes of this week's meeting due on 25 August.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
