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A review of things you need to know before you go home on Monday; Westpac and F&P Finance cut rates, employment confidence high, ditto investor confidence, ditto for bank satisfaction

A review of things you need to know before you go home on Monday; Westpac and F&P Finance cut rates, employment confidence high, ditto investor confidence, ditto for bank satisfaction
For Monday, March 30, 2015. <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/">Image sourced from Shutterstock.com</a>

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
Westpac reduced their standard mortgage rates for 2 and 3 years fixed to 5.99% today. This is not quite what it seems because they have lower 'specials' for these two terms.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
Westpac reduced their 1 month TD from 3.25% to 3.15%. They also cut their online bonus saver to 4.15%, down -5 bps. And Fisher&Paykel Finance have cut their TD offers for terms of 1 to 5 years by -10 to -50 bps.

JOBS MARKET STRONGER
New Zealanders have become more confident about the outlook for the labour market, consistent with continuing strength in GDP growth. Despite softness in consumer price inflation, Westpac says expectations for earnings growth have remained resilient. This will allay some of the RBNZ's concerns about a downshift in wage and pricing setting behaviour, they say. Separately, Treasury sees "solid employment intentions and expectations of wage growth in excess of inflation should support private consumption, with an expanding tourist sector providing further support."

'NO PROBLEMS'
A Consumer NZ survey out today shows that customers of NZ owned banks are the most satisfied of a very satisfied population of bank clients (all at approaching 90% or higher). They also reported that very few people are actually switching banks, despite many systems set up to facilitate that.

HANDS OFF
The RBNZ did not intervene in currency markets in February.

CONFIDENT INVESTORS
Commercial property investors remain optimistic about the market in most parts of the country, except Palmerston North and Northland, according to a Colliers survey out today.

WHOLESALE RATES STABLE
Wholesale swap rates fell today, down just -1 bp. The 90 day bank bill rate is unchanged at 3.64%.

NZ DOLLAR UNCHANGED
Check our real-time charts here.  The NZD is basically unchanged from the levels we opened at this morning. It is now at 75.3 USc, at 97.6 AUc, and the TWI is at 80.1.

You can now see an animation of this chart. Click on it, or click here.

Daily exchange rates

Select chart tabs

Daily benchmark rate
Source: RBNZ
Daily benchmark rate
Source: RBNZ
Daily benchmark rate
Source: RBNZ
Daily benchmark rate
Source: RBNZ
Daily benchmark rate
Source: RBNZ
Daily benchmark rate
Source: RBNZ
Daily benchmark rate
Source: RBNZ
End of day UTC
Source: CoinDesk

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1 Comments

This EU milk Quota story could be bad news for us if milk prices crash

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