ING increases variable rates for both new and existing customers

Another big bank has increased home loan variable rates across Australia, slugging customers with higher repayment costs. Find out if you will be paying more.

Home loan customers have been hit by another interest rate as one of the nation’s biggest lenders hikes its charges.

ING, the fifth-biggest home loan lender in Australia, today revealed it is lifting variable interest rates for all customers — both new and existing — by 0.15 percentage points.

This will impact more than 100,000 borrowers.

WHY IT IS HARDER TO GET A HOME LOAN IN 2019

FIND THE BEST HOME LOAN RATE DEALS

The changes begin from Thursday, February 7.

Owner occupier borrowers paying principal and interest with a $300,000 30-year mortgage will see their monthly repayments climb from $1,394 to $1420 with as their advertised rate lifts from 3.78 per cent to 3.93 per cent.

An ING spokeswoman reminded customers that variable rates are subject to change.

“We review our rates regularly and occasionally we need to increase them to ensure we can adjust to market changes while continuing to be best placed to provide our customers with simple, effective banking products,” she said.

ING chief executive officer Uday Sareen has revealed the bank is lifting home loan variable interest rates.

It comes after just last week National Australia Bank revealed it was lifting variable home loan rates, blaming the rising costs of wholesale funding costs.

Today NAB’s new standard variable rate rose by 0.12 percentage points to 5.36 per cent.

NAB held off lifting variable rates in September last year when all the other banks raised rates, but said they were forced to lift rates in the new year.

Financial comparison website RateCity’s spokesman Sally Tindall said it will “disappointing” for customers to experience another rate hike after ING lifted investor variable rates in September last year by 0.15 percentage points.

In July ING also increased variable rates for owner occupier customers by 0.1 percentage points.

“Cost of funding pressures for banks is real and we are seeing lenders increasingly choose to pass some of this cost straight onto their customers,” she said.

“Now is a great time to take stock of your home loan, while banks are hiking for existing customers some are choosing to cut rates for new customers.”

Home loan interest rates are continuing to fluctuate, earlier in the week smaller lender Heritage Bank revealed it was dropping investment loan interest rates by 32 basis points.

The Reserve Bank of Australia board meets for the first time this year on Tuesday and it’s strongly expected they will keep the cash rate on hold at 1.5 per cent.

@sophieelsworth