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Staff Reporter
At its monthly rate meeting last Friday, ANZ announced it will increase the interest on its standard variable rate by 0.06 per cent.
Speaking about the rate increase, ANZ chief executive Australia Philip Chronican said the funding environment was to blame.
“The funding environment changed quite dramatically in late 2011 as a result of the economic and financial crisis in Europe. This has seen wholesale funding costs rise and competition increase dramatically among banks for deposits,” he said.
“We accept our response to the new funding environment is difficult for some of our customers - even though deposit customers have benefited from better rates.
“Given this and the volatility we have seen in wholesale funding markets, we wanted to ensure these costs were sustained before we acted to pass them on. We also wanted to pace increases in a way that was manageable for our customers and ensured we were competitively positioned.
“Despite being the only bank that has committed to having a transparent process to review its lending rates, since we moved to reviewing variable rates each month ANZ customers have not been unfairly disadvantaged relative to the rest of the market.
“Throughout that period, our variable rates for mortgages and business lending have been competitively positioned and even with today’s increase our rates continue to be competitive compared to other major lenders.”
The latest interest rate hike is the second time ANZ has lifted rates independently of the Reserve Bank this year.
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