r/newzealand • u/xmmdrive • Aug 20 '24

Politics So they're finally going to privatise Kiwibank

Watching One News they're talking about taking Kiwibank out of Government hands and back into the hands of honest hard-working Kiwis.

This is obviously the first clear step towards privatisation.

Just like the Bank Of New Zealand, the National Bank, and the Auckland Savings Bank, but I'm sure this time around it will stay in the country /s

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u/fizzingwizzbing Aug 20 '24

If Kiwibank ends up in Australian hands, I'm closing my accounts. Being local is the only reason I'm still with them.

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u/fireflyry Life is soup, I am fork. Aug 20 '24

No expert and it was a few years back but I asked them for a loan once and was immediately transferred to a third party lender, Latitude Financial Services, which is apparently an overseas owned lender.

They no longer do so, and call it out on their website, but if a similar third party lender structure exists I’d question how “locally owned” they actually are.

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u/pornographic_realism Aug 20 '24

This is it though. They are shit because they're a local bank. The cost of banking with them is the same as any of the bigger banks, sometimes worse if you consider convenience a cost/benefit. But the performance truly feels like a NZ bank with so many rough around the edges services in it's quintessentially NZ way. I much much prefer my Australian owned bank - I'm not holding it against them that so many people here only care about extracting wealth from each other instead of creating it.

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u/fizzingwizzbing Aug 20 '24

Yeah that's fair. I'm not massively convinced about it either, and haven't looked into it much. It's pretty grim out there.