Share sale may help Kiwibank get back market share

My interests were raised by the announcement as one of the many reasons for the sale was to help make Kiwibank more competitive against its biggest-Australian owned peers. That had me scratching my head a little as the perception, in my mind at least, was that Kiwibank was competitive. Particularly in the main market we watch, home loans.

It turns out when you use our mortgage comparison tool and track Kiwibank's standard home loan rates against its big-bank peers the answer is it used to be competitive.

Use this link to see Kiwibank's standard two-year rate compared to ANZ, ASB and Westpac.

There is a point around the start of 2015 where Kiwibank's pricing policy changed and instead of regularly being a market leader on price, it has become a follower. Indeed the banks which tend to be market leaders these days are SBS amongst the small banks, BNZ tends to be competitive with its larger peers, and from time to time HSBC will shake the market with some enticing Specials (for high value customers only though).