Steve Jurkovich: Kiwibank CEO on the bank increasing its mortgage rates in an effort to remain competitive

Kiwibank is being forced to follow the big banks’ lead. 

Its one-year special rate has risen 20 basis points to 4.95%, and its two-year also increased 20 points to 5.39%. 

The increase is motivated by the bank’s desire to remain competitive as wholesale borrowing costs continue to rise. 

CEO Steve Jurkovich told Mike Hosking wholesale rates have been hard to deal with, but they don’t think the Official Cash Rate needs to increase in September.  

He says putting the rate up doesn’t produce more oil or make things more settled. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mortgage rates continue to rise as the wholesale market continues
to track up to your money's into The sixers standard
rate is up over twenty points to six two nine.
Steve Yukovic is the Keewi Bank Chief executive and is
with us Steve morning to you morning right twofold issue one,
the cost of borrowing to stimulating a tired old market?
Is this making life difficult for you at the moment?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Oh, markets are operating all right, But I think it
really is that people have got used to that there's
another big event being announced so regularly that markets are
sort of seeing their way through it. But yes, certainly
wholesale rates have been have been harder going.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Are we on a path somewhere or is this as
high as it goes?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Do you reckon? Well, we definitely don't think that the
ocr needs to go up in the next month in September.
You know our viewers, putting the rate up doesn't give
you any more oil, It doesn't make things any more settled.
So I don't know why you want to punish New
Zealanders for things that are outside of their controls, because
it really is, you know, imported inflation. And I don't

(01:00):
think tightening does anything but cause more difficulties for people
on the.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Big picture thing, this wholesale story globally and the AI
and the guilts and the bubbles and all that sort
of stuff. Is that playing its part.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well, there's certainly incredible And I've heard you over the
various mornings talk to people about the incredible amount of
money that's been announced that's either going towards AI or
supporting AI with data centers and other five hundred billion
dollars I think over night or the night before, you know,
being pulled together to try and drive that. So, I
mean it's really really difficult for me to understand where

(01:34):
the demand is going to come from to meet those expectations.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Is the deposit money attracting any attention near because they
go up as well as lending, of course, and we
focus too much on the less of the deposit of
people putting money into your bink.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah they are, but they've also got international markets that
have been giving them pretty strong results until they don't.
So the alternatives of tracking an S and P five
hundred or something like that, for the people that are
in position i've got that risk appetite have done very
well but yes, definitely had posits. As you know, is
the other side of the coin, and as you say,
we don't often pets talk about that as much as

(02:09):
that people are using those tune deposits to survive on men.
This is good news.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Nice to talk. Go well, Steve Yukovic, who's the Qui
Bank chief executive.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
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