The astounding profit Australian banks make in New Zealand every hour

Australian banks are making $580,000 in New Zealand every hour, money a former Kiwi banker says should be staying in the country.

Sam Stubbs joined The AM Show on Wednesday after developing a tool to track the profits of the four Australian banks operating here - ANZ, ASB, BNZ and Westpac.

The Aussie Bank Profit Clock calculates the profits made since the beginning of January 2019 and in just over two months, it is currently sitting at a healthy $905 million, after tax.

Mr Stubbs says Australian banks may be using New Zealand to subsidise problems they're facing in Australia.

"We're very concerned that we're paying for their losses. We saw in the latest ASB profit announcement that profits in New Zealand were up six percent, but they were down six percent in Australia."

He said New Zealand has consistently been a huge source of profit for Australian banks, their highest source on a per capita basis.

"While lending has gone up marginally, profit seems to be going up even more, the margin seems to be going up more, the four Aussie-owned banks here closed a combined 25 branches last year, they keep on squeezing the costs, they keep on squeezing the lemon.

"The problem is these profits account for 2.5 percent of GDP here versus 2 percent of GDP in Australia."

Mr Stubbs says there is an easy way to keep the money in New Zealand, and that is by switching banks.

"Vote with your chequebook. You can switch KiwiSaver and your bank account so much faster than you used to. I just moved all of my accounts from BNZ to Kiwibank and it was extremely quick.

"You can send a message that this is not good enough."

Newshub.