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State-owned Kiwibank is the last major to move its fixed home loan rates down ahead of Wednesday's OCR review, and these shifts give it a market-leading six month rate, and a matching one year rate

Personal Finance / analysis
State-owned Kiwibank is the last major to move its fixed home loan rates down ahead of Wednesday's OCR review, and these shifts give it a market-leading six month rate, and a matching one year rate
[updated]
Kiwibank logo with down arrow

Kiwibank has kicked off the week with its version of last week's fixed rate reductions to home loan rates.

Update: The original version of this story misstated the Kiwibank six month rate. Their new rate is 4.85% (and not 4.95% in the original version) and at the 4.85% level it is market-leading for that fixed term. Second update: ICBC has changed too and shifted some market leading points. See table.

Ahead of Wednesday's OCR review, these cuts from the state-owned bank are modest, basically just matching some of the big Aussie bank moves.

But one of them is market-leading - 4.85% for six months.

And their 4.49% one year rate matches the current market lows set last week.

But Kiwibank has not yet announced matching term deposit rates cuts, and on that front it offers savers some small premium over their big-Aussie rivals.

Now that all big five banks have moved we are left with a situation where

- Kiwibank ANZ has the lowest six month carded rate at 4.85%, in fact market-leading.

- Almost all banks, including Kiwibank now, have adopted 4.49% as their one year fixed rate

- ASB and Westpac have the lowest, and market-leading eighteen month rate at 4.49%

- TSB has the lowest two year rate at 4.49%

- Westpac has the lowest three year rate at 4.85%

- and Westpac also has the lowest four and five year rates at 4.99%. In fact, Westpac is the only bank with no offer over 5%.

But it could all change after Wednesday's OCR review.

To compare mortgage rate offers in a way that includes the application and account fees costs (or break fee costs if you need to do that), and applying the impact of a cashback/legal fee reimbursement/ or other incentive, you can now use our new home loan comparison calculator. You can find it here. Or, for convenience, we have added it to the bottom of this article.

We sense that the ability to achieve meaningful discounts from carded rates is now much harder, so the impact of the incentives offered are currently playing an outsized role. Reader-reported mortgage rates are welcome, so please record them if you have them. We need you to record them in the comment section below, which helps us stay on top of this aspect of the home loan rates market.

And still negotiate. How flexible banks may be will depend on the strength of your financials.

One useful way to make sense of the changed home loan rates is to use our full-function mortgage calculator which is below.

And if you already have a fixed term mortgage that is not up for renewal at this time, our break fee calculator may help you assess your options. Break fees will be minimal in a rising market. But they become important in a falling market, like now.

Here is the snapshot of the lowest advertised fixed-term mortgage rates on offer from the key retail banks at the moment. (Updated with new ICBC rates, which shifts some market-leading points.)

 Fixed, below 80% LVR 6 mths   1 yr   18 mth  2 yrs   3 yrs  4 yrs  5 yrs 
as at October 6, 2025 % % % % % % %
               
ANZ 4.89 4.49 4.59 4.65 4.89 5.49 5.49
ASB  4.95 4.49 4.49 4.65 4.94 5.19 5.39
4.99 4.49 4.75 4.75 4.95 5.09 5.39
Kiwibank 4.85
-0.20
4.49
-0.26
  4.69
-0.10
4.99
-0.06
5.39 5.59
Westpac 4.99 4.49 4.49 4.65 4.85 4.99 4.99
               
Bank of China  4.98 4.68 4.68 4.78 4.88 5.35 5.35
China Construction Bank 4.99 4.75 4.75 4.75 4.95 5.99 5.99
Co-operative Bank (*=FHB only) 4.99 4.39* 4.75 4.75 4.99 5.39 5.49
ICBC  4.85
-0.24
4.45
-0.10
4.55
-0.24
4.59
-0.30
4.89
-0.10
5.35 5.39
   (*=FHB only)SBS Bank 5.09 4.29* 4.75 4.75 4.99 5.39 5.39
  5.09 4.75 4.99 4.49 4.99 5.39 5.49

Fixed mortgage rates

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Daily swap rates

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Source: NZFMA
Source: NZFMA
Source: NZFMA
Source: NZFMA
Source: NZFMA
Source: NZFMA
Source: NZFMA

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5 Comments

I'm a bit frustrated......

Much talk about declining productivity in the NZ economy and recognition that housing is kind of a dead weight on productivity.

My frustration is that there is no discussion on business lending rates. What is happening with interest rates by business sector? Are these higher/lower than in the residential sector? Have movements matched residential? Are the productive sectors facing inequitable interest rate burdens?

A bit more transparency over all bank lending/interest rates would be appreciated. 

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Business rates are largely risk-based depending on the borrower's financials. No carded rates published to follow. The best we can do is here. We have been tracking them this way for more than a decade. Base rates almost only ever move when the OCR moves, because most SME rates are floating rates.

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Isn't alot of business lending secure against realestate property getting residential rates anyway? 

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Realistically for a lot of businesses (especially retail), the risk of failure is very significant. So you either need to take that risk yourself (secure against something much safer like property), or pay a lot of interest for the bank to take that risk for you. 

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Time to sell Kiwibank IMO. If they can’t compete with the Aussies then what’s the point? It would be like the government starting kiwimarket supermarkets to decrease prices, but kiwimarket being dearer. Pointless. 

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