Home loan rates up by more than RBA, as predicted
I warned you. Westpac were off the mark early on Tuesday morning with an aggressive term deposit rate, and I blogged that it would put pressure on home loan rates to increase beyond the RBA. Bingo! Westpac was first out with that announcement as well, so clearly they’d planned the whole thing: put out the term deposit good news first to take the sting off the home loan bad news.
St George are matching the Westpac term deposit offer, so no prizes for guessing what their home loan rates will do.
Now watch the other sheep follow the leader.
Compare home loans at mozo.com.au
Compare term deposits at mozo.com.au
Great article. You put the ‘Can’ back into DunCANson!
So what did St George do? They’ve increased variable rates by 0.39%, except their Basic Home Loan which is going up by 0.44%. So they clearly were intending to follow their Dear Leader. But after the media firestorm that Westpac has been through, St George has tried to differentiate themselves. They may be part of Westpac but they still want to be seen as a little different to Westpac.
I’d say that coming out with the second worst rate increase is not much of a differentiation at all, and shows clearly who pulls the strings.
What a shame the ACCC has only just realised that maybe Westpac shouldn’t have been allowed to eat St George.
[...] interest rates to banana smoothies and was an attempt to justify their interest rate rise nearly double that of the Reserve [...]