Here's how ING has responded to the RBA's July cash rate hike

ING has passed on the RBA’s July cash rate hike in full, meaning it will be raising interest rates on its variable home loans by 50 basis points. The bank also announced increases to some of its savings accounts. Here’s what it could mean for impacted customers.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) raised the cash rate by 50 basis points to 1.35% at its July meeting. This is the third cash rate hike in as many months, and the second month in a row that the central bank chose to raise the cash rate by this amount.

Typically, when the RBA announces a rise in the cash rate, banks and other home loan lenders will follow suit, passing this on to customers in the form of interest rate rises, and this month has been no different, with ING the latest lender to raise rates.

The big four banks – Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, NAB and ANZ – have also all passed on the rate rise in full to variable home loan customers, and Canstar is keeping track of which banks and lenders announce rate hikes as it happens through this week and beyond.

Readers, take note that home loan rate changes are often expressed in terms of ‘basis points’ – if you’d like to know more, you can read our explainer to find out about how basis points work.

ING home loan interest rate increase

ING has today announced it will hike the variable interest rates on its owner-occupier and investor home loans for new and existing customers by 50 basis points from 12 July 2022.

“Customers making interest only repayments will see updated repayment information starting 1 August 2022 and customers making principal and interest repayments will see minimum repayments increase from 4 September 2022,” the bank said on its website.

It added that “existing home loan customers will be sent a letter from 5 August 2022 confirming your new rate and new repayment information”.

We’ve crunched the numbers to find out how this increase could affect customers’ repayments.

The table below shows ING’s current lowest variable home loan interest rate, along with the increase announced today and when this increase will come into effect. It also shows what this could mean for your monthly home loan repayments, and how repayments have changed since 1 May 2022.

Note that these calculations are based on a hypothetical home loan of $500,000 with an 80% LVR. Our calculations are based on the presumption of a 30-year home loan, with monthly principal and interest repayments, using the lowest advertised variable rate on Canstar’s database from the lender in question.

ING savings increases

In some good news for savers, ING has also announced it will be increasing rates on some of its savings account products following the RBA’s latest cash rate call.

ING will be increasing the additional variable rate on its popular Savings Maximiser account by 50 basis points. The additional variable rate is available to eligible customers that meet the monthly criteria. The bank says the increase means eligible new and existing Savings Maximiser customers could earn a variable interest of rate of 2.60% per annum. See the ING website for T&Cs.

The bank will also be increasing Savings Accelerator variable rates for all new and existing customers. The rates for balances of $50,000 or more will increase by 0.50% p.a, while the rates for balances less than $50,000 will increase by 0.15% p.a.

These changes to savings accounts will come into effect from 12 July 2022.

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