CBA Lifted Fixed Rates up to 0.48% While Forecasting a Hold. At ANZ and CBA, Fixing Now Costs 19 to 44 Points Over Their Own Variable

Two prices moved in the space of three weeks, in opposite order. The majors repriced fixed rates before the Reserve Bank’s 29 September decision. They repriced variable rates after it, effective 9 October. For brokers, that sequence is not trivia — it changes what the fixed shelf is telling you, and it changes what a client’s bank statement is telling you.

The order the repricing happened in

The Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Board lifted the cash rate target by 25 basis points to 4.60 per cent on 29 September. Its statement was blunt about why: inflation remains elevated, “some of the upside risks flagged in August are materialising”, the Middle East conflict has broadened and global energy prices are “much higher than had been assumed in the August forecasts”. The Board also noted, in the same paragraph, that “housing prices have fallen in most capital cities and new housing loans have declined noticeably”.

By the time that decision landed, the fixed book had already been repriced. According to savings.com.au, NAB lifted fixed rates across dozens of owner-occupier and investor products on 17 September. Westpac followed on 18 September with increases of up to 0.50 percentage points on selected owner-occupier and investor loans, applied across Bank of Melbourne, BankSA and St.George as well. CBA was the last of the four to move, on 22 September, with increases of up to 0.48 percentage points — concentrated on two-year terms, which savings.com.au reported took increases of 45 to 48 points. Canstar’s own count of the same three-week period puts Westpac’s move at up to 0.45 points, slightly below savings.com.au’s figure; the direction is not in dispute, the precise ceiling is.

Then the variable side moved. All four majors passed on the full 0.25 points to variable borrowers effective 9 October. And on the same day, ANZ lifted fixed rates for a second time in just over three weeks.

What it costs to fix at a major

Canstar’s 9 October tables give ANZ’s full new fixed schedule alongside the big four’s lowest advertised variable rates. That makes ANZ the one bank where the comparison can be drawn from a single source on a single day.

On ANZ’s shelf, a client who fixes for one year pays about 19 basis points more than a client who stays variable with the same lender. On a $700,000 loan over 30 years, that is roughly $88 a month, or about $1,050 a year. Fix for five years and the gap widens to about 44 points — roughly $204 a month on the same loan.

CBA’s numbers run further apart. Its advertised package rate for owner-occupiers paying principal and interest was 6.78 per cent on a one-year fix after the 22 September increase, against a lowest advertised variable rate of 6.34 per cent after 9 October. That is a 44-point premium to fix — about $203 a month on a $700,000 loan, or roughly $2,440 a year. The caveat matters: these are advertised rates at different dates, on different LVR tiers, and CBA’s figure is a package rate carrying an annual fee. They are not like-for-like products, and nothing here substitutes for the live pricing your aggregator gives you.

Where the premium almost disappears

Here is the part the headline numbers bury. Canstar put the lowest variable rate in the market at 5.94 per cent among lenders that had announced post-September pricing, and the lowest fixed rate at 5.99 per cent, with two lenders below 6 per cent. Those are different lenders, so this is not a single shelf you can put a client on both sides of. But it tells you something useful: at the sharp end of the market, the cheapest fixed rate sits about five basis points above the cheapest variable rate.

Five points. Against 19 at ANZ and 44 at CBA.

That is the whole commercial case for the broker channel in one line. The cost of certainty is not a market-wide number — it is a function of where the client shops. A borrower who rings their own bank and asks “what would it cost me to fix?” gets the most expensive version of the answer available to them, and has no way of knowing it. The spread between those two answers is not marketing; it is the measurable value of running the question across a panel.

Fixed pricing is not a forecast

There is a shortcut doing the rounds in client conversations: the banks are hiking fixed rates, so rates must be going higher. It is intuitive, and the September repricing round is a clean demonstration of why it does not hold.

Compare what each major told the market with how hard it moved its fixed book, as reported by The Adviser on 1 October:

The two majors forecasting no further increase were among the most aggressive on fixed pricing, and NAB moved twice inside three weeks. The bank forecasting the clearest path to 4.85 per cent moved its one-year rate by 20 basis points. There is no mapping between a lender’s published view and its fixed pricing, because fixed pricing is not a view. Fixed rates are set off wholesale funding and swap market costs for the relevant term, plus the lender’s own margin and competitive positioning on any given week. The economics team’s forecast is a separate output of the same building.

Westpac’s chief economist Luci Ellis framed the bank’s own position carefully: “a November hike is now the base case, absent a lasting resolution of the Middle East conflict beforehand”. ANZ put it as “another rate hike at the November meeting, taking the cash rate to 4.85%, is more likely than not”. NAB’s note that “each decision to hike from here is, by definition, a tougher call” sits at the other end of the same spectrum. Four institutions, four positions, one direction of travel on fixed pricing.

The repayment nobody has paid yet

The variable increase took effect on 9 October. Almost nobody paid it on 9 October.

Each of the majors sends a repayment-change letter before the higher amount is debited. Canstar’s figures put CBA’s minimum notice period at 20 days and Westpac’s, NAB’s and ANZ’s at 30 days each. Canstar notes the full process can take two to three months in some cases. Which means that for a large share of the book, the higher repayment lands somewhere between late October and December.

Three consequences follow for brokers, and all three are operational rather than theoretical.

1. Bank statements are a lagging indicator right now

A refinance or purchase file assessed this month is being supported by statements showing a repayment the household is about to stop paying. The demonstrated surplus on those statements is overstated by roughly one 0.25-point step — about $114 a month on a $700,000 balance, more on a larger one. Lender servicing calculators will assess the new position correctly; the client’s own sense of their position will not.

2. “We’re coping fine” is a statement about the old repayment

When a client in October tells you they have absorbed the September rise, they are almost certainly describing a repayment that has not yet changed. Canstar’s data insights director Sally Tindall was direct about the cohort this catches: “There will also be some borrowers that realise the higher repayment is not a bar they can clear.” For some, she said, it will mean “digging into their all important buffers, just to stay afloat”. Her advice to borrowers was to “call your bank and canvass your options, but make sure you get independent advice as well”.

3. The hardship window is open before the stress appears

The gap between the effective date and the first higher debit is the window in which a broker can have a pre-emptive conversation rather than a reactive one. Once the debit lands and a payment is missed, the conversation is about arrears. Before it lands, it is about structure — and the client still has a clean repayment history to refinance on.

What this does to a file written now

Best interests duty obligations under Part 3-5A of the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 do not change because pricing moved. But two things on the file get harder to evidence in a week like this, and both are worth a look at your templates.

The first is currency. Advertised rates in this market have a short shelf life — ANZ repriced fixed twice in three weeks. A recommendation documented against a rate sheet from a fortnight ago is documented against a price that may no longer exist. Date-stamping the pricing you compared, and naming the source, is cheap insurance.

The second is the alternatives actually considered. If the market’s cheapest fixed rate sits five basis points above its cheapest variable while a major’s sits 44 above, then the set of options a client was shown materially determines whether fixing looked expensive. That is a file-note question, not a philosophical one.

This is general information for professional development, not advice about your obligations. ASIC’s guidance on the best interests duty is in Regulatory Guide 273, and your licensee or compliance adviser is the right place to confirm the standard your file notes have to meet. The Broker Times looked at the fix-versus-variable file note in more detail in our 11 October piece on rate expectations and point-in-time assessment.

What to review this week

Broker questions

Sources: Reserve Bank of Australia, “Statement by the Monetary Policy Board: Monetary Policy Decision”, media release 2026-27, 29 September 2026. Canstar, “Millions of borrowers slugged with higher rates from today as ANZ also hikes fixed”, 9 October 2026, and “A fourth cash rate hike in 2026: What borrowers need to know”, 29 September 2026. savings.com.au, “Westpac joins NAB, ANZ in lifting fixed mortgage rates”, 18 September 2026; “Big four banks lift fixed home loan rates: CBA joins the hike”, 22 September 2026; and “RBA lifts cash rate to 4.60%: CBA, NAB, ANZ and Westpac respond”, updated 30 September 2026. The Adviser, “Westpac joins ANZ in forecasting November hike”, 1 October 2026. Repayment figures are The Broker Times’ own calculations on a $700,000 principal-and-interest loan amortised over 30 years at the rates stated, and are illustrative only. All rates are advertised rates subject to lender conditions, LVR tiers, package fees and change without notice.