Half year result guesses, page-30

From BEN results today...

The Australian economy is likely to outperform its peers and over time we expect unemployment levels to normalise. Economic growth is likely to be modest in financial year 2024 before showing improvement in financial year 2025. Notwithstanding these challenges, we expect the shortage of housing stock and forecast population growth to be supportive of property prices.

While our asset quality remains sound and arrears are at historic lows, we do expect bad debts to trend upwards and move towards longer term averages of 10 to 12 basis points over time. Borrowers remain in good shape with 41 percent of loans at least one year ahead on repayments and 31 percent of loans two years ahead on repayments. Pleasingly, we have seen very little deterioration in these numbers with 84 per cent of home loans maintaining a financial buffer.