Mike's Minute: Bank margins are going up despite major profits

Best of Business · Nov 9, 2025 · 2m · transcript

The battle of the bank BS is back.

BNZ, who announced their profit last week, talked of the strong competition out there.

But I note their margin went up, up, 6 points to 2.43%.

So if there is so much competition, how come the margin is up?

Then came the claim from the Reserve Bank among others that the big banks are being tardy when it comes to passing on the Reserve Bank cuts to us punters.

Smaller banks are sharper. SBS claims they have hoovered up almost 6000 new customers as changing banks has become easier. Remember SBS last week put out their 3.99% money, limited to certain people, but…