BNZ pushes through two selected fee increases over the holiday period, one for a personal loan product and another for a revolving credit product

UPDATE:

BNZ has now advised that two things need to be changed in this story.

1. The $250 Service Fee "has always been" $250, but a December 'special' saw it reduced to $100 for that month only. We apologise for not noting this fact in the following story.

and

2. Our monitoring of the increase in the Mortgage One fee identified that BNZ had changed the fee to $25. They say this was an error on their part. They have now set it back to $20, so there is in fact no change.

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The original story follows, only for the record. The above corrections fix the 'errors', and render the original story obsolete.

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Over the holiday period, BNZ has pushed through two "small" service fee increases.

Firstly, on December 23, BNZ's Advanced Personal Loan product had a jump in its "Service Fee", a loan facility fee that is billed when you first draw down.

The Advanced Personal Loan is a consumer credit product you might use to buy a major appliance, rather than use a credit card. This is because the interest rate is 17.85% rather than their "normal" 20.95%.

But be aware that use of a BNZ Advanced Personal Loan now comes with a $250 upfront 'Service Fee'.

This is a jump from $100 previously.

You can compare personal loan interest rates between institutions here.

Then yesterday (January 5), BNZ also raised the monthly base fee on its Mortgage One revolving credit account.

A revolving home loan is like having a big overdraft on an everyday transaction account. A floating interest rate means you can make lump-sum repayments whenever you want without worrying about early repayment charges. 

BNZ has two revolving credit products. Its Rapid Repay account involves transaction charges based on the frequency of transaction activity. The interest rate is currently 6.74% pa on a floating basis.

Their Mortgage One product has a higher interest rate of 7.14% on a floating basis, but all account transaction activity is covered by a fixed flat fee.

It is this Mortgage One fee that has been increased, going from $20 per month to now $25 per month, a rise of a quarter so that the Mortgage One account costs $300 per year.

Without factoring in the extra costs of the higher interest rate that applies to Mortgage One, you would need to make more than 29 electronic transactions on your Mortgage One account to come out better than having a Rapid Repay account.

Other institutions have lower cost revolving credit plans than BNZ. Interest rates and base fees can be compared here.