Westpac suspends credit card interest payments for three months for customers suffering from the coronavirus lockdown
- Westpac has suspended credit card repayments and interest for three months
- Australia's second biggest bank giving relief to COVID-19 affected customers
- It caters for those who have either lost their jobs or had their hours reduced
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
Westpac has suspended credit card interest payments for three months for its customers suffering from the coronavirus shutdowns.
Australia's second largest bank is providing relief to individuals who have either lost their job or had their hours cut.
It has announced a series of measures to help credit card customers hit by COVID-19, with the Reserve Bank of Australia forecasting the steepest economic downturn since the 1930s Great Depression.
Westpac has suspended credit card interest payments for three months for its customers suffering from the coronavirus shutdowns
Westpac on Friday announced that for three months, credit card customers would accrue no interest on purchases or on existing debts.
Customers would also be entitled to a three-month repayment holiday and would continue to be allowed to spend on their credit card if they stayed within the limit.
Westpac's chief executive of consumer services David Lindberg said 40,000 credit card customers had sought help with managing their finances since the bank offered a COVID-19 support package in March.
'These measures will allow customers experiencing financial stress as a result of COVID-19 to have a temporary reprieve from repayments and interest,' he said.
Australia's second largest bank is providing relief to individuals who have either lost their jobs or had their hours cut. Pictured is a woman at Eastwood in Sydney's north carrying shopping
The Commonwealth Bank, Australia's biggest home lender and retail bank, is also giving credit card customers a repayment holiday.
CBA's Angus Sullivan group executive of retail banking said it recognised coronavirus had stopped some customers from making minimum repayments in March, and had scrapped late fees and interest.
'This support is focused on customers who are finding it difficult to meet their current commitments before further government stimulus arrives in April and May,' he said.
The other major banks have offered repayment holidays for business and home borrowers but not credit card customers.
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On Tuesday, Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe forecast Australia's economic output would shrink by 10 per cent in the first half of 2020, with most of the contraction occurring in April, May and June.
Dr Lowe also forecast a 20 per cent plunge in the total number of hours worked as unemployed surged from 5.2 per cent in March to a 26-year high of 10 per cent by June.
'The result of both the restrictions and the uncertainty is that over the first half of 2020 we are likely to experience the biggest contraction in national output and income that we have witnessed since the 1930s,' he said.
Since March 16, 517,000 Australians have applied for the JobSeeker unemployment benefit with a year's worth of claims processed in just six weeks.
Westpac chief economist Bill Evans is expecting the Reserve Bank to keep interest rates at a record low of a quarter of a percent until the end of 2023 at the earliest.
'The unemployment rate is unlikely to fall much below six per cent and even if some short term downward momentum builds in the unemployment rate the RBA will be cautious seeing no need to be pre-emptive,' he said.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg yesterday met with the chief executives of Australia's big four banks - Commonwealth, Westpac, ANZ and NAB.
They agreed to set up hotlines for business borrowers who from the first week of May will be entitled to $1,500 fortnightly wage subsidies as part of the $130billion JobKeeper program to help six million stood-down workers.
