The RBA’s revelation is contained within its latest Financial Stability Review.
 
According to the review, some mining service providers are finding their profits down around levels experienced during the 2008 financial crisis.
 
The bank says the profits of listed mining services companies are estimated to have fallen by more than 15% in 2014.
 
“While the full effects of the falls in commodity prices are yet to be felt, these headwinds could make it more difficult for resource-related companies to service their debt, raising the risk of default,” the RBA says.
 
“The credit ratings of some resource-related companies have already been downgraded, while ratings implied by credit default swaps and bond pricing suggests that the market expects more downgrades to follow.”
 
This does not mean a free-for-all on the banks though.
 
According to the RBA, Australia’s domestic banks are not hugely exposed to the resource-related sector.
 
The RBA reckons the combined value of exposures of the Australian banking system to resource producers and service companies to be about 2% of banks’ total exposure.
 
Another factor in the banks’ favour is the general robustness of, certainly, the resources producers.
 
According to the RBA, most of them are in fairly fine financial fettle.
 
“In aggregate, the gearing and debt-servicing ratios for resource producers remain noticeably lower than those of the broader listed corporate sector,” the bank says.
 
“In addition, most of the debt is owed by large companies that have neither high gearing nor high debt servicing ratios.
 
“These companies are generally expected to be relatively well placed to ride out a period of low commodity prices because they have reasonably strong balance sheets, low costs of production, high margins and access to other sources of funding.”
 
It is not quite the same for their service providers though.
 
“The financial health of mining services companies looks less robust than that of the broader corporate sector,” the RBA says.
 
“The aggregate debt servicing ratio of listed mining services companies has increased significantly over the past couple of years as profits have fallen sharply, and is now around the peak reached during the financial crisis, while aggregate liquidity is also lower than for other listed corporation.
 
“It is likely that parts of the mining services sector will find the current operating environment challenging, particularly those firms that are more exposed to resource investment or exploration.”
 
On a cheery note though, the RBA suggests that “loan defaults to date have generally been limited”