(12 March 2010 – Australia) While the majority of home loan customers have benefited from the Reserve Bank of Australia’s interest rate cuts over the last two years, consumers using credit cards have not enjoyed the same benefits with banks keeping 85 percent of the net benefits.According to TheBull, an online publication, as of March 1st 2010, the net impact of the RBA’s movements in the official cash rate over the past two years was a 3.5 percent decline from the high of 7.25 percent in March 2008.
Financial comparison website RateCity’s data revealed that on both low-rate and standard personal cards the average drop in interest rates was only 0.5 percent; resulting in the big four keeping around 85 percent of the RBA’s total rate cuts of 3.5 percent.
TheBull reported that the overall decline made by Westpac was 0.51 percent, 0.25 percent for CBA and only 0.05 percent for ANZ.
However, National Australia Bank’s customers are now worse off than before with their customers having endured an overall rise of 0.14 percent, according to RateCity’s data.