Month: May 2021

The New Zealand Bankers’ Association says for banking talk to your new bank, which will provide you with a Switching Bank Request Form. Once you’ve completed and returned that form your bank will identify and transfer over all your recurring payments, taking most of the pain away. Nice.

Beaumont said banks lend where they can, subject to lending criteria, which includes the borrower’s equity or deposit and their ability to repay the loan, so they weren’t “going in over their head”.

Politicians from both sides of the House sought answers on how banks would protect the estimated 1% to 2% of customers who were likely to never access digital banking services. NZBA chief executive Roger Beaumont said phone banking was an “elegant solution” for customers in this situation, because most still had a landline.

“It’s great to have interest in our banking hubs trial from regions like the Far North. Banks are closing some branches because customers prefer more convenient ways of banking. Some branches get fewer than 10 customers a day.”

Roger Beaumont talks to RNZ’s Kathryn Ryan about the regional Banking Hubs trial.

“In short, money is relatively cheap at the moment. That’s driven by a number of things, including the all-time low official cash rate, set by the Reserve Bank, which is currently at 0.25 per cent. Other factors include the cost of overseas funding, and Reserve Bank initiatives to increase the supply of money.