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AAP
AAP
Business
Poppy Johnston

Savers warned to show more interest in banking rates

Banks have been criticised for picking and choosing savings accounts to lift interest rates on. (Joel Carrett/AAP PHOTOS) (AAP)

The onus is still on savers to make sure their deposits are attracting competitive interest rates even after the consumer watchdog launched an investigation into the matter last year.

Australian banks have been criticised for picking and choosing accounts to lift interest rates on.

RateCity research director Sally Tindall said all four of the big banks had gone beyond the Reserve Bank's interest rate increases, which was a welcome development, but only to select customers and conditional accounts.

While some big four customers are attracting interest rates as high as 4.75 per cent, other savers are stuck on rates barely above one per cent.

"This is how they tried to kind of stem the criticism," Ms Tindall told AAP.

"It's this great dividing range between savvy savers who shop around for the best rates and meet terms and conditions and read fine print, versus those people who set and forget and just assume your bank is going to do the right thing by you."

By offering attractive rates on a sprinkling of products, she said banks were able to attract price-sensitive new customers while maintaining healthy profit margins by keeping existing savers on lower rates.

The better savings account deals also come with a range of terms and conditions attached and, while not necessarily onerous, rates can plummet if those boxes are not ticked.

The treatment of savers will likely be up for discussion at a parliamentary hearing next week, with leaders from ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Westpac due to be grilled by politicians over two full days.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission also began investigating the behaviour last year, with the final report due at the end of 2023.

ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said it remained a priority issue for the regulator.

"We have seen a reasonably prompt response, with the last movements in the cash rate, prompt responses still in mortgages, but trailing in terms of size and time on deposits," Ms Cass-Gottlieb told AAP.

Borrowers were a different story, however.

RateCity's Ms Tindall said mortgage holders had generally been treated fairly by the major banks.

Ms Tindall said banks were passing interest rates on in full, which was to be expected, and going above and beyond to attract new customers with more competitive introductory offers.

"It's their prerogative to do that, or to not do that."

But she said the banks could be communicating better with home loan customers, with many unsure how many interest rate hikes had been applied to their loans.

"I do think that for families out there trying to budget for these rate hikes, it can be horribly confusing not to know what's coming down the pipeline."

Interest rate movements tend to hit borrowers with a lag, taking around two or three months for extra money to start coming out of bank accounts to allow time to notify customers and process the change.

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