MST Financial bank analyst Brian Johnson says banks are competing aggressively, but profits are not as strong as they seem. “If you have a look at the profitability of the Australian banks at the moment, and this is kind of driven by Macquarie, ostensibly, it looks great, and share prices are really high. But the high profitability is a function of the fact that there’s virtually no loan losses at the moment. If you were to strip that out, the profitability looks pretty ordinary,” Johnson said.