Kiwibank bumps its home loan rates higher

Kiwibank is the latest of the New Zealand big banks to lift its home loan interest rates, following the Reserve Bank’s latest cash rate move.

On May 24, RBNZ delivered its 12th straight rate hike, lifting the cash rate by a further 25 basis points to 5.5%, in its continued effort to bring inflation back towards its target range.

Kiwibank announced that it is passing the full OCR change to its variable and offset variable term loans as well as to its revolving loan, with the changes to take effect on June 6 for new lending and June 19 for existing lending.

See the table below for the rate changes.

The rate change from Kiwibank followed similar moves from ASB, ANZ, and Westpac.

ASB said it will raise its housing variable rate from 8.39% to 8.64%, while its ORBIT home loan rate was increased from 8.49 to 8.74%. The rate changes took effect from June 1 for new customers. For existing customers, the changes will take effect on June 8. 

ANZ said it will increase its floating, flexible, and blueprint to build (the discounted floating rate for people building their own home) home loan rates by 0.25% on the following dates:

Also following RBNZ latest OCR hike, Westpac’s standard six-month and one-year rates will lift by 20 basis points to 7.69% and 7.59%, respectively, while its three-year rate will rise by 10 basis points to 6.69%. Surprisingly, the bank’s two-year rate will decrease by 14 basis points to 7.05%. The effective date for the rate changes were June 1 for new customers and June 15 for existing customers.

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