Kiwibank, a new
bank for people wanting to go back to a simpler way
of banking in New Zealand, began a nationwide rollout
on March 23. The country's only public bank, it is
also the only New Zealand-owned bank since 1989 when
the last of the four government-owned banks, the PostBank,
was privatised.
Few countries sold and deregulated public utilities
and services faster than New Zealand under successive
Conservative governments in the 1980s and 1990s. Now
under a Labour-Alliance coalition government, the
public sector is making a come back in banking, electricity,
telecommunications and transport.
Kiwibank is the brainchild of Alliance leader and
Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton. As the Minister
for Economic, Industry and Regional Development since
end-1999, he has presided over the strong re-entry
of the public sector into the economy. Addressing
the Commonwealth Business Forum on Oct 2, 2001 he
said in a no-holds-barred speech titled ‘Lessons
of Privatisation’: "It is difficult to
outline New Zealand's recent experience of private-public
partnership without considering the chaos that economic
policy can wreak."
For New Zealand, the privatisation of banks altered
the economic picture. By the early 1990s, not only
was there not a single bank or major financial institution
that was New Zealand-owned, but many parts of the
country lost banking services altogether, triggering
an exodus of business. There was also growing public
resentment to the high bank charges levied by the
foreign banks, which annually reported record profits
that were repatriated overseas. The financial profit
worsened the country's already critical, current account
deficit situation.
Anderton's Kiwibank seeks to break the private sector
stranglehold on the banking sector. The bank has been
established by the publicly-owned New Zealand Post,
which is highly profitable and well-run. The Post
has remitted over $500 million in dividends to the
government, and it is from those dividends that it
pays for police, education, and social services. The
Post's 170 franchises across the country have agreed,
following long-drawn negotiations on terms and conditions,
to open Kiwibank branches. The bank is aiming for
about 300 branches by the end of May or early June
– in the 140 NZ Post corporate outlets and 170-odd
post franchises.
Hundreds of customers are signing up to avail of the
low entry fees and face-to-face services on offer.
New Zealand's banks like the Australian-owned ANZ
charged a high $5,000 entry fee that excluded large
numbers of people from the banking system. In the
face of competition ANZ introduced a new low-fee account,
Connect 10, for ordinary people in mid-January, weeks
before Kiwibank had even opened. Although the bank
has denied its new account was making a pre-emptive
strike on the looming competition, other banks are
expected to similarly respond to the competition.
Kiwibank had also promised it would be undercutting
mortgage rates and other charges imposed on clients
by the big banks. The established banks have been
making big profits on home lending, asserts Massey
University banking studies senior lecturer, David
Tripe. However, three days before Kiwibank's branch
opening programme, New Zealand Reserve Bank Governor
Don Brash raised the official cash rate, the benchmark
for mortgage and business lending rates, from 4.75
percent to 5.0 percent. Still Kiwibank's revised home-loan
rates – from 6.10 percent to 6.70 percent –
is half a percentage point lower than the interest
rates on offer at most other major banks – a
saving of $30 a month on a $100,000 loan over 20 years.
The opening of the "People's Bank" for New
Zealand has not been without hiccups. Marketing expert
Dr Mark Colgate has criticised Kiwibank for missing
a chance to catch potential customers by not opening
all its branches simultaneously across the country
and by not having software that lets customers open
accounts on-line. The main rollout followed the successful
pilot opening of seven branches in February. Some
30 new branches are expected to open every week from
end-March to June.
May 10, 2002.
[Source: New Zealand Herald www.nzherald.co.nz]
|