Treasurer Jim Chalmers has told the banks to pass the Reserve Bank’s higher interest rate on to savers, saying there is a “role for the regulator” to investigate lags between rate rises for borrowers and savers.
The banks also came under political pressure from NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, who is up for re-election next month, on Wednesday morning.NSW government figures show as the RBA began to cut the cash rate in July 2019, some major banks held some of this back and banks continued to hold back cuts after the RBA’s October 2019, March 2020 and November 2020 downward moves. Between 0.43 and 0.60 percentage points have not been passed on to mortgage customers, according to the figures.
ABA CEO Anna Bligh. “Some banks have gone up [with savings rates] more than 50 times in the last 12 months.”“Premiers – and I’ve been one – do not control interest rates, federal governments don’t control interest rates,” she said. But banks were also limited in the amount they could cut rates during the pandemic as deposit rates approached or hit zero, meaning official cuts could no longer be passed on to many savers.
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