Kiwibank's increasing the interest rate paid on five savings products by as much as 65 basis points.
The rate on Kiwibank's 90 Day Notice Saver, a floating rate savings account, is now 4.75%, up from 4.10%. The rate on its 32 Day Notice Saver is up 50 basis points to 4.05%. See how these rates compare to what other financial institutions pay on similar products here.
Kiwibank's also increasing the interest rates paid on its Standard Online Call, PIE online Call and Business Online Call products by 50 basis points to 3.85%. The 0.05% bonus rate on the Business Online Call product remains unchanged, whilst the other two continue to offer no bonus rate.
The increases are effective today, Friday March 10.
Kiwibank says there won't be any changes to its variable, or floating, home loan rates at this time.
You can see all banks' cash PIE rates here, and online call rates here.
23 Comments
I'm doing the opposite. Kiwibank has had too many system outages for my liking - in 2021, there was a period stretching over a week where customers couldn't access their funds.
Only last month, they went offline for an hour - all the while their system status message stated systems were working normally.
Ability to access and move your funds shouldn't ever be in doubt.
The other banks have been far worse with far more outages. Plus ANZ has poorer security, could not correctly calculate for kiwisaver government contributions due to date database failures and still requires paper forms & data entry. ASB still has poor security, high fees and poor returns on saving. Westpac has poor security, openly asked if they could sell private customer trading information, BNZ ... shudder how many bailouts now. Do you think the grass is greener if you keep blinders on the state of the industry tech.
Not when you consider most, over 90%, those rates disappear with the need to use emergency savings for unexpected costs (which happens more frequently for many reasons for many families across NZ in cost of living crisis). Kiwisaver savings lets you keep the high interest rate no matter the number of transactions per month. Worth it considering the value does not change that much.
Yes. The bank will deduct resident withholding tax from interest paid. So long as you've given them the correct marginal tax rate there will be no adjustment in your end of year tax return, though if they don't have the right rate on file for you, you will need to pay (or be refunded) the difference. Most main banks have PIE funds which you can use instead which have tax advantages if your wage/salary/other earnings put you in the 30% or higher tax brackets.
Agreed. With internet banking it is so easy to move savings from one to the other. Like others Ive noticed on this site, I moved my on-call savings out of KB last week, they were way too slow adjusting after the OCR rise 2 or 3 weeks ago. With the 100k deposit guarantee limit to come in, many will have multiple banks now. Paying loyal customers less than the forced OCR rate is not on. I however had never had a problem with KBs internet banking, but from my experience ANZ has the best internet banking site and app, and also the best phone customer service.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.