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Major banks will encourage consolidation in 2009 by limiting their relationships to top aggregators, Deloitte has predicted.
"I think you'll find banks will be looking to reaffirm that control over the channel by encouraging consolidation ... by trying to be selective about the groups that they work with," said James Hickey, a banking partner with Deloitte Actuaries and Consultants.
Hickey's comments followed the publication of the annual Deloitte Australian Mortgage Report, which showed the mortgage industry was showing resilience in adapting to the current volatile conditions.
Both BankWest and ING Direct announced they would limit their relationships to the country's largest aggregators earlier this year.
The Deloitte report predicted that 2009 would be "the year of the large bank" as continued funding challenges will force non-banks to ride out the storm.
"It's an opportunity for them to capture market share and certainly the distribution end of the value chain and we've already seen movement on that. So we do see 2009 being a year of opportunities for those larger banks that do have access to deposit funding, that do have scale, that do have the ability to get granular about their customer base.
