ABM: No price war in mortgage rates pricing

PETALING JAYA: The Association of Banks in Malaysia (ABM) has refuted there was a price war brewing in the pricing of mortgage rates.

Responding to an English daily quoting research house HwangDBS Vickers as saying that banks had agreed to end the mortgage price war, among others, by standardising rates, ABM said: “There cannot be standardisation of mortgage rates by the banks. Interest rates for housing or mortgage loans are to be determined by the individual banks in line with their funding cost, business strategies or business model.

“The same goes for the revamping of home loan packages as banks will need to examine their options and make adjustments accordingly that will enable them to compete effectively. For the same reasons, ABM does not regulate nor prescribe rates.” it in a statement to StarBiz:

It said it was unable to make any further comments, adding that if banks were unable in the first place to standardise rates, how could they agree to end the mortgage war.

StarBiz recently reported that lenders like Maybank, Public Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Alliance Bank and EON Bank had revised upward their mortgage rates to base lending rates (BLR) minus 1.8% from BLR minus 2%-2.3%.

At the same time, some banks no longer absorb the legal fees on loan documentation which is now, borne by consumers. However, an industry source and several analysts agreed there was some sort of consensus reached among the banks on a cordial basis to standardise mortgage rates even though each bank has the right to determine its rates.

Industry observers expect other banks too to follow suit in raising rates to boost their net interest margins in view of marginally slower loans growth. Some foreign banks are still maintaining their previous rates.

It is also learnt that among the foreign players, Citibank and HSBC Bank have to date not raised their mortgage rates, but may be pressured to do so in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, CIMB Group Bhd group chief executive Datuk Nazir Razak described the rising mortgage rates as “something that was going to happen because rationality will come back.”

“Markets have a tendency to do that. Clearly, pricing of mortgages had been driven to uneconomic levels. Rationality has come back to the pricing of mortgages. I support rationality in pricing,” he said yesterday after the signing ceremony for Genting Bhd’s 10-year medium-term notes programme.

By The Star (by Daljit Dhesi)