Trending News 4 June

Banks have a ‘responsibility” to pass on rate cuts

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told a conference recently that banks and other lenders “have an economic and social responsibility to ensure the free flow of credit.” 

Mr Frydenberg urged lenders to pass on RBA rate cuts to their borrowers.

“Interest rate changes should be passed on,” said the Treasurer, “[Banks] have a responsibility to ensure that lending is certainly free-flowing across the economy.”

Some industry experts are predicting that the big four banks will not pass on any RBA rate cuts in full to their borrowers but Vadim Taube, CEO of InfoChoice is confident borrowers will get the full cuts.

“The big banks are sometimes slow to pass RBA rate cuts onto borrowers but following the Hayne Royal Commission and recent strong words from the treasurer Josh Frydenberg, we expect all four big banks to quickly fall into line with the RBA’s rate movements,” said Vadim Taube.

Compare the top home loan products from Australia’s banks, credit unions, building societies and non-bank lenders here.

Credit card debt is falling!

Australian credit card debt has hit an 8-year low, as Aussies rein in spending and new rules from regulators kick in.

Credit card debt fell 3.9 per cent in the year to April 2019 according to the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority.

In January 2019, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission introduced new regulations that generally reduced credit limits.  Credit card providers must now only approve a credit card application if they believe the consumer can pay off the entire limit within three years.

For new credit cards issued since January 2019, credit card issuers must allow you to reduce your credit limit or even cancel your card online.

Compare low rate credit cards from Australian banks, credit unions and other credit card issuers here.

Investors are discovering the smaller banks

Property investors are turning away from the big four banks and finding better mortgage deals with the smaller banks and lenders, new data from the banking industry regulator shows.

The volume of investor loans held by the big four Australian banks fell by half a billion dollars in April but rose by $360 million dollars across the top 10 non-major Australian banks.  

The favourite non-major banks for property investors are currently Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, Macquarie Bank, Suncorp, Bank of Queensland, ING, HSBC, AMP, Members Equity, Heritage Bank and Teachers Mutual Limited.

Compare the top home loan products from Australia’s banks, credit unions, building societies and non-bank lenders here.

Westpac customers targeted in Pay ID hack

100,000 Westpac transaction account customers may have had some of their personal details exposed in a giant hack of the bank’s Pay ID system. Pay ID uses customer’s mobile phone numbers as an identifier to verify fund transfers and transactions.

“Westpac can confirm we had detected mis-use of the New Payments Platform’s PayID functionality,” a Westpac spokesperson said.

The unknown hackers tried to access the details of customers’ accounts by using the PayID name lookup service on the Westpac website.

“No customer bank account numbers were compromised,” said the Westpac spokesperson.

“There has been no further inappropriate activity detected.”