The Australian banking industry is seeding a future credit boom with an openness to latitude in lending standards."Lending at six times or more of gross income is ... nearly ten per cent" of bigger banks lending book, APRA executive Heidi Richards said at the Macquarie University Financial Risk Day in Sydney on Friday."Mortgage lending at four times gross income is relatively common, at one-third of all new ADI housing loans," Richards said.Six times is not the limit, but rather 6.5 times.The results of an APRA "deep dive" borrower first exercise showed that it was not uncommon to find the most generous ADI was prepared to lend 50 per cent more than the most conservative, Richards said.She said APRA found "this was surprising since, with mortgage comparison sites and on-line calculators now readily available and mortgage insurers providing some oversight, one might expect to see reasonable consistency in how loan applicants are assessed."