Life offices’ homes loan budget $22m

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32589, 24 April 1971, Page 3

Life offices’ homes loan budget $22m

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, April 23.

Member companies of the Life Offices’ Association, comprising most of the life assurance offices in New Zealand, have budgeted s22m for home finance loans this year.

This is the reply given by Mr R. P. Martell, chairman of the Life Offices’ Association, to criticism by a group of Auckland builders who complained about lack of lending.

Mr Martell said this figure represented only members of his associations, and the total sum made available for direct assistance to home buyers in the year from all life assurance sources, including the Government Life Office, could easily be as high as s3om. “This very large sum, or amount approximating it, is made available annually by the life offices to help to meet their policy-holders’ housing needs and must go a very long way towards alleviation

of the problem for the whole nation,” said Mr Martell. At the same time, he said, it should not be inferred that life offices had a duty to support home buyers alone. The principal duty of a life office was to invest funds to produce the highest possible re turn to the policyholders con sistent with safety, and inevitably the portfolio of investment was very widely spread in all forms of securities.

“It is probably true that some life offices are in fact out of the lending market at this particular time, but this would be because of very heavy demands in the current year rather than refusal by the life office to help some t builders,” Mr Martell said. H