Major banks still rolling out fixed-rate hikes

The four biggest home loan providers have continued their uptrend in fixed rates at the start of the year, in an anticipation of a likely cash-rate hike later this year.

Westpac was among the first to forecast a rate hike by August, which would see the cash rate increase by 15 basis points to 0.25%.

Westpac economist Bill Evans said this potential rate hike by the Reserve Bank of Australia would come despite the likely impacts of the Omicron variant, which dragged the economic growth projections for 2022 from 6.4% to 5.5%.

“We do not see that correction as having a significant impact on jobs growth or wages and inflation,” Mr Evans said.

Westpac previously called for a February 2023 rate hike, but Mr Evans said the adjustment in the projections was due to where inflation is currently tracking.

“We expect that underlying inflation will reach 2.4% in 2021 and lift to 2.6% in March 2022 and 2.9% in June 2022,” he said.

The last time the cash rate was adjusted upwards was in November 2010, when it was raised by 25bps to 4.75%.

NAB also projects a series of rate hike beginning in November, which would bring the cash rate by 0.75% by February 2023.

All big four banks have now raised their fixed rates across their investor products, with Westpac already rolling out two rounds of hikes.

Interestingly, their variable rates remained the same, with some banks reducing their special offer variable rates.

Standard Investor Variable Rates for Principal and Interest rate Loans

These rates are available from their respective websites.

Meanwhile, below are some of the recent changes in the home loan rates among the big four over the past few weeks:

ANZ

CommBank

NAB

Westpac