OCR pass on rates vary from two days to five weeks

All banks passed on the recent 0.25% lift in the OCR but took a varying number of days to do it.

Eight banks that provide 98% of New Zealand’s housing loans provide information to the FMA about their pass on rates.

The August OCR pass-on rate varied from two days at the fastest clip to 15 at the slowest for new borrowers and eight days to five weeks for existing customers.   

The FMA now has a year of data on pass-through tracking for the ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Kiwibank, SBS, Westpac, Co-operative Bank and TSB.

The Co-operative Bank had the biggest lift at 0.35% and was also the fastest at two days to lift its rate for new customers, while it took 16 days for the lift to become effective for existing clients.

Westpac and Kiwibank took five days to lift their floating rates for new customers and eight days and 19 days respectively for existing clients.

Coming in at six days for new clients was SBS and existing customers had an extra five weeks at their existing rate before a 0.25% increase. 

ANZ, ASB and TSB waited seven days before introducing their new floating mortgage rate to new clients while for existing ANZ and TSB customers it was 21 days and just eight days for ASB clients.

Waiting the longest was BNZ. New customers were not hit with a bigger floating mortgage rate for 15 days after the OCR lift, however existing clients were also put on the higher rate at the same time.

Banks supply the information about their pass on rates voluntarily and the FMA publishes the information provided a week after the OCR is announced. 

The regulator says it does this to improve transparency and to help people better understand the speed and scale of bank responses to OCR changes for new and existing customers.

This helps people to make informed decisions about banks and banking products.

The aim is also to encourage banks to reflect on fair treatment for their customers and how their products align with customer’s requirements.

Now that it has a full year of data, the FMA says it is working to enhance how it presents this on its website.

“We want to make it easier to understand and compare how and when the banks pass through interest rate changes to both new and existing customers.”