ANZ-National was New Zealand's largest bank in 2008 by a wide margin, the latest KPMG Financial Institutions Performance Survey shows.
The bank had total assets of nearly $120 billion, followed by the Bank of New Zealand with $64 billion, ASB Bank with $59 billion and Westpac with $52 billion.
There was a large gap back to Kiwibank which was ranked fifth with $7 billion of assets, Rabobank with $6 billion and TSB Bank with $3 billion.
But it was the government-owned Kiwibank which showed the most improvement in the year, increasing its total assets by 52% in the period.
KPMG financial services head Godfrey Boyce said while New Zealand banks could not avoid some of the repercussions of the global financial crisis, they compared favourably with overseas.
"The global banking crisis is a defining event which will change the banking industry forever.
But while a domestic recession will test New Zealand banks' asset quality, the relative risk of the banks operating in New Zealand is considerably lower than many of the larger European or United States banks," Mr Boyce said.
New Zealand banks were financially sound with adequate capital and earnings although the return on equity was reducing, he said.
KPMG was forecasting that earnings of the major banks for the six months ended March 31 would continue to be "relatively strong" despite an increase in impaired asset expense.
However, the earnings would not be sustained and impaired asset expenses were likely to increase in the next few quarters, Mr Boyce said.
The balance sheets of New Zealand banks continued to be dominated by residential mortgage lending.
Property prices had fallen in the last 15 months and were continuing to fall.
"As a result, the largest single driver of bank growth over the last decade has stalled. To date, the effect of this has been mitigated by strong agricultural and business lending growth."
