ING, ME, HSBC and UBank join March RBA rate cut tribe

By Ceyda Erem · · 2 min read
Fact Checked

Despite the news of toilet paper outages across the country and the rapid spread of the coronavirus, it would’ve been hard to miss the news that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) lowered the cash rate from 0.75% to 0.50% on Tuesday. 

As of today, 26 lenders have announced their decision to whether they will be passing the full 0.25% cut onto their home loan customers. 

Sending shockwaves through the country all members of the big four - Westpac, CommBank, ANZ and NAB -  each revealed that they would be passing on the RBA’s rate cut in full, though not effective immediately. 

Westpac Chief Executive, David Lindberg in particular stated that the reasoning for the full cut to support customers through a sensitive time in the economy. 

But it was online lenders, such as Athena, Homestar and neobank, 86 400 that took the lead and announced their decision within minutes and slashed rates immediately. 

Other lenders who wasted no time announcing rate reductions were FreedomLend, loans.com.au and Reduce Home Loans. 

Second wave of cuts pour through 

As the dust settles from Tuesday afternoon, more lenders have since come forward with their rate decisions. 

Some of the latest lenders to pass on the full 0.25% RBA cut include: 

- ME, effective date, 26 March 

- ING, effective date, 18 March

- Newcastle Permanent, effective date, 26 March 

- MyState, effective date, 31 March 

- HSBC, effective date, 23 March 

Online lender, UBank will also cut their variable rates by 25 basis points, however customers won’t see these new rates come into effect until 3 April. 

Majority of lenders playing nice this time around 

According to the Mozo database, of the 26 lenders who have announced their rate cut decision, only 3 have announced they will not pass on the cut in full  - Bank of Queensland, Virgin Money and RACQ Bank will all only pass on 0.17%.

While the remaining home loan lenders haven’t been as quick to make a decision, Aussies looking to stay up to date with the latest movements can check out our March RBA rate cut table.