50,000 Westpac customers facing home loan shock

CEO Catherine McGrath says her bank is proactive in dealing with rate shock. (Image: NZME)

Tue, 08 Nov 2022

Westpac New Zealand has 50,000 customers rolling off fixed-rate mortgages with interest rates below 4% in the six months ending March next year.Chief executive Catherine McGrath said the bank uses a 2.5-percentage point margin over its lending rates to test whether a customer could still afford their loans if their interest rates went up that much.“That’s given us a buffer. For the vast majority of customers, that means they’re not rolling on to a rate that we haven’t tested them for,” McGrath told BusinessDesk.The...

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