ME Bank’s new owner has some work to do to get its acquisition firing, after ME lost ground in mortgage and personal lending, and credit cards in the year to June.

Bank of Queensland completed its A$1.3 billion acquisition of ME Bank in July and last week released ME’s 2020/21 financial report.

ME’s home loan balances fell from $26.4 billion at the end of June last year to $25.3 billion at the end of the 2020/21 year. Credit card balances fell from $140.8 million to $133.2 million and personal loan balances plunged from $126.1 million to $94 million.

Things were better on the deposit side of the business. Retail customer deposits rose from $8.6 billion to $9.1 billion and business customer deposits rose from $1.8 billion to $3.3 billion. Superannuation banking deposits fell, as did “advised and corporate deposits”.

Net interest income rose 3.6 per cent to $473.6 million. Operating expenses rose 15.6 per cent to $310.6 million.

The bank booked an impairment credit of $6.5 million, after a charge of $59.5 million in 2019/20. Thanks to the big impairment reversal, profit was up from $80.8 million in 2019/20 to $112.6 million in the year to June.

BOQ has said that ME will continue to operate as a separate ADI in the short term, with no immediate changes expected for customers of either business. When it does consolidate the businesses and surrender ME’s licence it plans to retain the ME brand.