ANZ New Zealand's first-half net profit rose slightly as it gained market share in the mortgage market for a third successive quarter.
This is a sharp turn-around following years of declining mortgage market share ever since ANZ took over National Bank in 2003.
Chief executive David Hisco said he realised when he started the job in October 2010 that there was probably insufficient focus on Auckland - the city in which the bank had the lowest share across New Zealand.
Subsequently the bank put on more mobile managers and trained more people in the branches there.
Mr Hisco said the bank also looked at what it could do to make it simpler for customers to get a mortgage and subsequently made about 50 process and policy changes.
He said the bank's margins were at a historical high with people moving from fixed onto variable mortgages.
"Generally you'll find in this sort of market that fixed rates have a finer margin and the shape of the yield curve at the moment means that a lot of people are looking to take a fixed rate loan, so we're seeing people switch back into fixed and so that's taking the edge off the net interest margin for us."
Mr Hisco said about 75% of people taking out a mortgage are currently taking out a fixed rate mortgage.
