A rare flat profit for New Zealand's banking sector

KPMG's Financial Institutions Performance Survey review of 2019, reveals a decline in profit for New Zealand banks, with net profit after tax down almost one percent to 5.71-billion dollars.

The result comes off the back of two consecutive years of steady profit growth with increases of over seven percent in 2017, and 11 percent in 2018.

Head of Banking and Finance at KPMG, John Kensington, says it comes down to a couple of factors.

He says they include increases in provisioning for loan losses, and extra costs in making sure they have the right sort of people in the industry to improve the conduct and culture.