Official Cash Rate left unchanged

Alan Bollard left the OCR, the level of wholesale overnight interest rates,unchanged at his announcement  last Thursday. His main comments were in relation to the $NZ and he has left the door open for further OCR cuts if the dollar won’t drop of its own accord.

As a result we have seen no movements in home loan interest rates.

Borrowers are currently faced with a trade off between the lowest borrowing costs possible, a 6 month or 12 month fixed interest rate, and higher longer term fixed interest rates that provide some piece of mind.

If your one who is taking the cheapest option, we suggest that if you have the capacity, you increase the repayments over and above the minimum required. Additional repayments come straight off your loan amount which in turn can save you considerable sums in interest going forward. Use these current very low home loan interest rates to get ahead of the curve on your home loan.

We were amazed to see the National Australia Bank, the decision maker for the BNZ, drop its dishonour fee’s on overdrawn transaction and savings accounts for personal banking customers. A move which has been followed today by Westpac albeit slightly modified.

On Aussie telly we watched a spokeswoman indicate that the cost to the NAB was some AU$100 million per annum. It was disclosed however that part of the reason for doing so was the bank averaged 5,000 complaints a month from customers voicing their displeasure over the fee’s. Looks like they’ll save alot of money from not having staff tied up with complaints….