ANZ leads the charge of the bank brigade in mortgage interest rate increase

Was it their turn to go first? No one is saying, but the ANZ lead the other three major banks in increasing their variable mortgage home loan rates by a quarter of a percent after the Reserve Bank raised the cash rate by a similar amount.

ANZ was the first of the major banks to move in late morning, the National Australia Bank following by mid afternoon, and the Commonwealth Bank and Westpac by days end.

All four banks are raising their variable mortgage home loan rate by the same amount of the official rate rise of quarter of one percent, that was announced by the RBA this week.

These same banks had recently stated that they will raise rates even without RBA official increases so I guess we should be grateful the rises were not higher.

In my view we need more competition in the Australian mortgage market. But instead we have less as most of the big non bank mortgage lenders are being gobbled up by the banks in the wake of Global Financial Crisis.

Author: Rick Adlam, Mr Mortgage