Banks will not have to raise rates again, outside of Reserve Bank changes to the official cash rate, says the Reserve Bank. The RBA is now expected to leave the official cash rate set at 3.0% for some time.
Interest rate analysts said the RBA would be very concerned if banks raised rates independently. The RBA said that bank margins had contracted since the start of the global financial crisis but had recovered in recent months to pre-crisis levels.
Banks were expected to move rates up by up to 0.4% following the Commonwealth's rate hike of 0.10% on standard variable mortgages last week. However other banks have not yet adjusted their standard variable rates but have moved some of their fixed rate products up by about 0.5%.
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