February 2011
The class action that Maurice Blackburn is currently running in the Federal Court in Melbourne v ANZ on behalf of 27,000
Read more...
15 November 2010
And still the banks persist in illegal “con”tracts. Please see the extract from Bankwest’s conditions of use booklet
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2. And still the banks
persist in illegal “con”tracts.
Please see the extract
from Bankwest’s conditions of use booklet:
Bankwest
Credit Card
Conditions of Use and Privacy
Statement and Consent to Use
Your Information
15 November 2010
7.
Changes to your Card Contract
Subject
to the Credit Card Account Access Conditions of
Use,
we may change your Card Contract at any time without your consent, (In
contract law, they may not) including:
•
changing an annual percentage rate;
•
changing the amount, frequency, time for payment or method of calculating any minimum payments;
•
changing the amount of, or frequency or time for, payment of any fee or charge;
•
imposing a new fee or charge;
•
reducing (but not increasing) the credit limit; and
•
changing the method of calculating or debiting interest.
And
did you know that Australia and Germany are the only two countries in the
western world that permit variable interest rate “contracts”?
"Go on, charge what you like" - the Aussie
mortgage contract
Professor Kevin Davis, research director of the Australian Centre for Financial
Studies "Australian home-buyers sign a contract which gives the bank the
right to change the interest rate whenever and to whatever it wants,"
Professor Davis has produced an American-sourced list of twelve leading
economies in which only two - Australia and Germany - have variable rate
mortgages predominantly completely variable at the bank's discretion.
The others have so-called "indexed" variable rate mortgages in which
the contract stipulates the number of points above an indicator rate the bank
will charge.
"In Australia you would legislate that loan contracts could not contain a
clause giving the lender the discretion to change the rate," he said.
Such a law would have prevented the Commonwealth Bank imposing the outsized
rate increase it announced on Melbourne Cup day.
"Suppose one of our banks got downgraded from a
AA to B. What would happen at the moment is they would just increase the margin
on their mortgage rates to cover the extra costs they would face, whereas that
risk should fall on the mangement and the
shareholders."
Variable
at the bank's discretion?
Variable mortgages worldwide
United States NO Spain NO
Japan NO Holland NO
Korea NO United
Kingdom SOMETIMES
Canada NO Gemany YES
France NO Australia
YES
Research Institute for
Housing America 2010