Member Article

Northern Rock announces rate cut

Nationalised bank Northern Rock has announced it was passing on half of last week’s interest rate cut to its variable rate mortgage customers.

The group is reducing its standard variable rate (SVR) mortgage by 0.25% to 5.09% from February 1.

It said that in deciding how much of the 0.5% reduction in the Bank of England base rate to pass on, it had “given careful consideration to all of its customers”.

Only around a dozen lenders have so far announced plans to reduce their SVRs, with the majority of the more than 90 lenders continuing to sit on their hands, saying their rates remained “under review”.

Nationalised bank Bradford & Bingley is among those which have not yet said how much of the cut they will be passing on.

HSBC, Lloyds TSB, which also lends under the Cheltenham & Gloucester brand, and Nationwide are all reducing their SVR by the full 0.5%, while Halifax and Royal Bank of Scotland/NatWest are passing on 0.25% of the cut.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .