Asian institutional banks have been expanding at a huge rate in Australia, chasing a more profitable market given our relatively high interest rates, while European banks continue to exit the market. 
Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese-based banks have a combined $88 billion in assets in Australia, which now exceeds the $79 billion of US bank loans to companies in this country. China Construction Bank, Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) have been among those expanding the fastest.
Chinese and Taiwanese banks have experienced the biggest expansion - a fourfold increase since 2010, when their assets were just $9 billion, at an average rate of 38 per cent a year since 2013, analysis of banking data by corporate law firm Minter Ellison shows.
European banks still have the biggest share among foreign lenders, at $175 billion, but they have been declining by about 7 per cent a year for more than five years.
Bank of China has amassed $20 billion in total assets in Australia, up from just $8.7 billion in 2013, including total loans of $13.5 billion, up from $6.2 billion, the Minter Ellison analysis shows.
ICBC has almost doubled its book, from $2.6 billion to almost $5 billion. China Construction Bank has increased its loans more than fivefold in the same period to about $4.3 billion, including the acquisition of the RBS Australian loan book in 2015.
Japanese banks have also been bulking up on Australian corporate loans, but at a much slower pace, increasing at about 16 per cent a year.
However, they still have more assets than Chinese banks, at $52 billion in total. At The Australian Financial Review Banking and Wealth Summit this week Makoto Shibata, head of global innovation at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, will discuss how the lender is using technology to drive its expansion.
The foreign banks have moved into Australia by a combination of purchasing loan books and organic expansion, mainly by joining banking syndicates lending to big business, primarily in the commercial property and infrastructure sectors.