(Reuters) – All of Australia’s “Big Four” banks on Friday passed on the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) latest rate hike to their customers in full, raising their respective standard variable home loan rates by a quarter-point.
Earlier this week, the RBA stunned markets by raising its cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.1% and warned that “some further tightening” may be required to ensure that inflation returns to target in a “reasonable timeframe”.
The cash rate now sits at its highest level since early 2012, bringing the total RBA hikes in its price battle to a whopping 400 basis points since May last year – the fastest tightening campaign in the nation’s modern history.
Out of the top four lenders, Commonwealth Bank of Australia , ANZ group Holdings and National Australia Bank said their rate hikes would formalize by June 16, while Westpac Banking Corp will hike its rates from June 20.
(Reporting by Echha Jain in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Eileen Soreng)
