A review of things you need to know before you go home on Monday; out the other side, commercial construction weakens, car insurance refunds, long term rates still rising, swaps unchanged, NZD firm, & more

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
SBS Bank has cut most 'special' home loan rates, and also their Standard rates.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
Rabobank, First Credit Union, and NZCU Auckland all cut term deposit rates

"WE ARE READY"
Cabinet decided NZ will move to COVID-19 Alert Level 1 on Tuesday as officials are no longer aware of any active cases in the country.

HASTENING THE PULLBACK
The COVID-19 lockdown appears to have had a bigger impact on commercial building projects than residential construction, with the value of new building starts dropping -4.2% in the March quarter compared to a year ago. But the actual impact of this data applies just to the last two weeks of the quarter, so weakening confidence of construction firms was already starting to show and the lockdown has hastened it. Q2 won't be pretty and there is little evidence that those early (pre lockdown) negative 2020 trends are going to turn around.

A KICKSTART?
But it is not all grim. BNZ's economists say: "We think the move to Level 1 will provide the economy a significant boost. For the vast majority of us there will be little difference in our day to day activity as we emerge from Level 2 but we think the confidence impact will be tangible. Confidence has a huge impact on both consumer spending and investment activity. And there is already some evidence of household expenditure picking up in excess of our expectations."

CO-OPERATIVE BANK ANNUAL PROFIT DROPS
The Co-operative Bank posted a -30% drop in March year net profit after tax to $6.7 million as the Covid-19 crisis made its presence felt. Bad debt expenses surged to $8.2 million from $3.6 million with a $6 million increase in collective provisions reflecting the likelihood of increased future loan losses stemming from Covid-19. The bank says it's supporting more than 2500 loan payment deferrals, equivalent to about 8% of its home loan and personal loan customers.

SURPRISING REFUND
Insurer Tower says it will be refunding customers $7.2 mln, due to the lower cost of car claims during the COVID-19 lock-down period, because "it's the right thing to do". Know any other insurer who has done that? We would like to know.

LOCAL UPDATE
There were zero new Covid-19 cases again today in New Zealand, and finally there is no-one left with it in the whole country. We are now at sixteen days with zero new cases.

AUSTRALIA UPDATE
In Australia, there have been 7265 cases (+5 since this morning), 102 deaths (unchanged) and a recovery rate of just under 92% (unchanged). 25 people are in hospital there (+7 since this morning) with 5 in ICU (+2). There are now 523 active cases in Australia.

GLOBAL UPDATE
The latest compilation of Covid-19 data is here. The global tally is now 7,006,400 and up +150,500 from when we checked this morning. This is rising at much faster pace than recently. American cases rose by +15,000 since this morning to 1,940,500. US deaths now exceed 111,000. Global deaths now exceed 403,000.

EQUITY MARKET UPDATES
The move to Level One has brought a big rise in the NZX50 Capital Index which is up +2.6% so far. Australia is on its Queens Birthday public holiday today. In early trade, Shanghai is up +0.3% in very early trade, Hong Kong is up +0.6% and Tokyo is up +0.9%.

SWAP RATES UPDATE
Swap rates may have changed little today, with any firmness only at the long end. We don't have wholesale swap rates movement details yet but we will update this later in the day if they show a significant movement. The 90-day bank bill rate is still unchanged at 0.26%. The Aussie Govt 10yr is up another +10 bps to 1.17%. The China Govt 10yr is down -2 bps to 2.87%. And the NZ Govt 10yr yield is up over 1% today for the first time since April 9 at 1.01%. The UST 10yr is up another +9 bps since this time Friday to 0.90%

NZ DOLLAR FIRM
The Kiwi dollar has continued to rise, up marginally to now just on 65.2. Against the Aussie we are also firm at 93.6 AUc. Against the euro we are firm at 57.8 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is up to just under 70.

BITCOIN FIRMS
The price of Bitcoin is firmer from its open this morning at US$9,728, a 2.4% rise. The bitcoin price is charted in the currency set below.

This soil moisture chart is animated here.

The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».