Bank of Queensland could expand the ranks of Australian covered bond issuers away from the country’s big four, with the bank set to meet investors next month to discuss the structure of a potential covered bond programme.

Bank of Queensland announced on Friday that, with leads Commerzbank and National Australia Bank, it will meet investors “to discuss a possible covered bond structure” during the week commencing 12 September.

The Australian regional bank has previously sold senior unsecured bonds and RMBS. As of 29 February, the Australian bank had a A$30bn (Eu20.3bn) book of housing loans.

The issuer is rated A3 by Moody’s, A- by Standard & Poor’s and A- by Fitch.

Alongside the big four Australian banks (ANZ, CBA, NAB and Westpac) who have been active in issuing internationally, Macquarie Bank joined the market in February with a Eu500m five year debut, while Suncorp-Metway has periodically issued Australian dollar benchmarks – the last a A$350m 10 year issue on 16 August.

Bankers away from the leads suggested that it will be some time until Bank of Queensland establishes any covered bond programme.

“It’s a more defensive announcement than usual, and it seems likely that it will be quite a while until we see a deal,” said one. “Macquarie, who are a more familiar name, also took their time when setting up their programme and making their debut, so that is appropriate.”

When covered bonds were first introduced in Australia, representatives of some smaller, lower rated financial institutions suggested that an inability to achieve triple-A ratings for covered bonds could restrain their take-up of the newly available instrument, and pooling or aggregation models were suggested.

However, since then financial institutions such as Bank of Queensland have been upgraded, and the widespread use of first soft bullet and more recently conditional pass-through structures has made covered bonds a more efficient option.