A review of things you need to know before you go home on Wednesday; a rush of rate cuts (but not from BNZ), jail for mortgage fraud, dairy disappointment, C/A deficit falls, swap rates steepen, NZD falls

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

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
SBS Bank and TSB Bank pass on only 15 and 20 basis points, respectively, of the 25 basis points OCR cut to floating rate borrowers. But still no word from BNZ. (Anyone home at BNZ?) We have put a value on what the banks are gaining and will retain by not passing on all of the OCR cut to borrowers.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
We had reductions today announced by Cooperative bank, SBS Bank, HSBC and UDC. The cuts ranged from -5 bps to -25 bps for term deposits, and are basically -25 bps for savings accounts.

JAIL FOR MORTGAGE FRAUSTER
Vicki Ravana Letele has been sentenced in the Manukau District Court to 3 years and 2 months’ imprisonment. She was found guilty on 10 charges of dishonestly using a document. The convictions related to property transactions undertaken during the second half of 2010, the total value of the fraud being approximately $3.6 mln. Ms Letele worked together with Ramni Kumar to obtain mortgage finance for low income families who would not otherwise have been able to obtain finance, by using false documentation. This mortgage finance was used to purchase properties from interests related to Ms Letele and Ms Kumar, generating a profit for them.

DASHED DAIRY HOPES
Global dairy prices dipped -2.9% in latest auction to seven-month low. The key WMP prices were down -0.8%, but overall the result is very disappointing especially after pre-auction expectations were for a reasonable rise.

FACTORY CLOSURE
After a round of consultation, Fonterra has decided to close its Kaikoura cheese factory. It will shut in late April. It was too small to be cost efficient in the products it made.

HIGH AND HOLDING
The level of new home loans approved last week held steady at high levels. There were 6,906 loans approved worth $1.603 bln. Last week and this one are usually the weeks that end the March mortgage season and levels drop away from here until November. But in 2015 we did not see this fall-off and whether we do this year is yet to be revealed.

CURRENT ACCOUNT DEFICIT FALLS
Stats NZ says our current account annual deficit fell to -3.1% of GDP in December from -3.3% in September. But the quarterly deficit increased by $221 mln to -$1.9 bln. These results are better than markets were expecting. However, Westpac says "... the details don’t offer much cause for celebration. The narrowing in the overall deficit came despite a worsening in both the goods and services trade balances. Instead, the headline result was driven by a sharp drop in the outflow of profits from overseas-owned firms in New Zealand. While this might be a positive for the current account deficit, it doesn’t reflect well on the strength of the domestic economy."

ANZ BORROWS $625 MLN
ANZ Bank New Zealand today announced the final details on its offers of unsecured unsubordinated bonds. The issue size of the offer of floating rate bonds maturing 22 March 2019 has been set at NZ$300,000,000. The margin has been set at 1.00% per annum and the interest rate for the first interest period will be announced by ANZ via NZX. The issue size of the offer of fixed rate bonds maturing 22 March 2021 has been set at NZ$325,000,000. The margin has been set at 1.40% per annum and the interest rate has been set at 4.00% per annum. All of the bonds have been allocated to financial intermediaries for distribution to their clients and there will be no public pool available.

WHOLESALE RATES STEEPEN
Swap rates fell at the short end and rose at the long end, steepening the rate curve. 1 year swaps are down -1 bp to 2.38%, 2 year swaps also fell -1 bp. But swaps rates for 4, 5, 7 and 10 years all rose by +1, +2, +3 and +4 bps respectively. NZ swap rates are here and they are at or near their all-time lows. The 90-day bank bill rate is down today by -2 bps to 2.36%.

NZ DOLLAR SLIPS
Markets bid down the NZ dollar today. It is now at 65.9 USc, at 88.4 AUc and 59.3 euro cents. The TWI-5 is down to 69.9. Check our real-time charts here.

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