Briefs: 10-year fixed rate loans, Westpac NZ's 'responsive' online banking, BoQ selling 2-year bonds 12 February 2015 5:23PM Banking Day staff Briefs, Borrowing is running at record low rates, with competition heating up. Last week, for instance, TSB Bank launched a ten year fixed rate home loan, a first for New Zealand, with a fixed rate of 5.89 per cent per annum for residential and investment property loans. In Australia, it's a different matter entirely, with research compiled by comparison website finder.com.au revealing 11 ten-year fixed home loans associated with the six lenders monitored by finder.com.au: RAMS; ANZ; Westpac; Commonwealth Bank; Newcastle Permanent; and NAB. The average rate for these loans is 7.05 per cent. Westpac New Zealand has launched its new "Westpac One" platform, which it said was "the first fully-responsive online banking platform in Australasia," although plans are that it will only be available in New Zealand. "While we have an aligned overarching digital strategy with Australia, we work separately and have separate operating systems," a Westpac NZ spokesperson said. The bank said its new platform would work across all devices to check balances and transfer money between accounts without the need to log in. Customers will also be able to apply for, or activate, accounts, home loans, personal loans, credit cards and term deposits and temporarily block and unblock a lost or stolen credit card. Bank of Queensland yesterday launched a benchmark senior unsecured 2.25 year Australian dollar denominated medium term note issue. The joint lead managers are CBA, NAB, UBS and Westpac. The transaction is expected to price today (12 February). Convention is that a benchmark issue is for A$500 million or more. On the face of it, further reductions in the cash rate are likely to be positive for the loans underlying Australian residential mortgage-backed securities, to the extent rate cuts are passed on by lenders. If so, the RBA's February rate cut came not a moment too soon, as prime housing loans in arrears had increased marginally in December to 1.01 per cent, according to the Standard & Poor's Performance Index. Low-doc arrears, associated with cash-flow sensitive self-employed borrowers, increased by around 19 basis points to 4.72 per cent in December. Nonconforming RMBS arrears hit 5.38 per cent during the same period, an increase of 25 bps for the month. Leveraged Equities, part of the Bendigo and Adelaide Bank group's wealth management business, has claimed first mover kudos in reducing the variable interest rates across their margin loan and Investment Funds Multiplier products by 0.25 per cent per annum. This means last week's RBA rate cut will be handed over in full to customers who have borrowed to invest. These new margin loan rates take effect from tomorrow (13 February). After a seasonal dip in issuance in 3Q 2014, volumes of additional Tier 1 bonds recovered strongly in 4Q14 and banks issued over US$29 billion of AT1 instruments in the quarter, the second strongest in terms of issuance since 2Q14. This brings the total capital instruments with numerical write-down or conversion to about US$131 billion, according to the Fitch report "Banks AT1 Tracker". Around 89 per cent of AT1 bonds in 4Q 2014 were issued domestically and abroad by Chinese banks. As a result, as of end 2014, Chinese banks were the third-largest AT1 issuers behind UK and Swiss banks but ahead of other continental European banks. Following action by ASIC, Goldhype (trading as Smart Link Rentals), has agreed to refund consumers for rental payments made to businesses that were not licensed to provide consumer leases. Smart Link rents out consumer electronics and household items under fixed term consumer lease agreements, and also enters into commercial agreements with other businesses wanting to run household rental businesses, charging them a license fee. As a result of ASIC's actions, over A$230,000 has been refunded to 115 consumers, the majority of whom were in receipt of Centrelink benefits, who entered into contracts with these lease providers.