Category: Latest News

Border Bank to roll out Confirmation of Payee in 2025.
Know who you’re paying – before you pay.

In a world where digital banking is part and parcel of everyday life, making sure your money goes to the right place has never been more important. That’s why Border Bank is introducing Confirmation of Payee (CoP) — a new name-checking feature that adds an extra layer of protection when you’re sending money.

Set to launch in 2025, CoP works by checking the account name you enter when setting up a new payee or updating an existing one. Instead of relying solely on BSB and account numbers, the system verifies that the name you’ve entered matches the one on the account you’re sending money to.

If there’s a mismatch or something looks suspicious, you’ll receive a prompt — giving you the chance to choose whether you want to go ahead and make the payment, pause and double check the details – or terminate the payment altogether.

This extra layer of security helps prevent scams, like invoice fraud or impersonation, where scammers trick people into sending money to the wrong account. It also helps to flag incorrect account details and reduces the chance of mistaken payments.

Once CoP becomes available in your Border Bank Internet Banking and Mobile Banking App, it will be automatically applied when you’re making or updating payments — giving you real time alerts before you send a payment. There’s no need to opt-in or sign-up.

Confirmation of Payee is part of a broader push across the Australian banking system, led by Australian Payments Plus (AP+), to strengthen payment security for all members. Border Bank is proud to be taking part in this important development to help protect our members and make banking safer for everyone. You’ll see more information from us leading up to launch, including how CoP will appear in your Internet Banking and Mobile Banking App. In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about CoP, visit here.

Good news for our current Home Loan members and new members.

Following the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) decision to reduce the official cash rate by 0.25% p.a. we’re reducing our home loan variable rate interest rate by 0.25% p.a. effective 28 February 2025.

What’s Changing:

All Variable Rate Home Loans

For new borrowers: Effective 28 February 2025, we will decrease the interest rates for new variable rate home and investment loan borrowers by 0.25% p.a.

For existing borrowers:Effective 28 February 2025, we will be decreasing the interest rate for existing variable rate home loan borrowers for both Owner Occupied and Investment loans, (Principal and Interest (P& I) and Interest Only (IO)) by 0.25% p.a. affecting repayments from 28 February 2025.

For more info on changes to our Home Loan interest rates, visit our Home Loan and interest rate pages.

*Terms and conditions, lending and eligibility criteria apply and are available here.

 

Head to the Mobile Banking App page to learn more or download the app.

We’re excited to announce that starting April 5th, 2024, we’re boosting our interest rates for our 4-month Term Deposits* by 0.25 p.a.! This means more returns on your money when you choose to save with us for a little longer.

Take a look at our updated rates here.

*Terms and conditions apply and are available here.

We’ve got some exciting news to share! Starting March 28th 2024, we’re lowering the interest rates on our two and three-year fixed rates for our First Home Loan product*.

New members may be eligible for our two-year fixed rate of 5.79% p.a. with a comparison rate of 5.91% p.a. or our three-year fixed rate of 5.59% p.a. with a comparison rate of 5.85% p.a.*

Take a look at our updated rates here. Don’t miss out on these incredible rates—seize your dream home opportunity with us today! Be sure to review our First Home Loan eligibility criteria here.*

*Fees and charges and lending  criteria apply. Rates are subject to change at any time.

*The First Home Loan is only available for applicants that qualify for the Housing Australia. Interest Only is only applicable for construction purposes.

*The comparison rate is based on a loan of $150,000 over a 25 year term. WARNING: This comparison rate is true only for the examples given and may not include all fees and charges. Different terms, fees or other loan amounts might result in a different comparison rate

Buying your first home? 

We’ve got some exciting news to share! Starting March 21st, 2024, we’re making it even easier for you to achieve homeownership by lowering the interest rates on our First Home Loan.*

For new eligible customers, we’re rolling out a fantastic low variable rate of 5.84% p.a. and a comparison rate of 5.92% p.a.*! And if you prefer the certainty of a fixed rate, no worries—we’ve also dropped our rates for the First Home Loan 2 YR and 3YR fixed rate options!

Take a look at our updated rates here. Don’t miss out on these incredible rates—seize your dream home opportunity with us today! Be sure to review our First Home Loan eligibility criteria here.

*Fees and charges and lending  criteria apply. Rates are subject to change at any time.

*The First Home Loan is only available for applicants that qualify for the Housing Australia. Interest Only is only applicable for construction purposes.

*The comparison rate is based on a loan of $150,000 over a 25 year term. WARNING: This comparison rate is true only for the examples given and may not include all fees and charges. Different terms, fees or other loan amounts might result in a different comparison rate.

Police Bank has been on a necessary journey of renewal. While the first phase was to stabilise and then improve the culture, financial performance, and risk management practices of the bank, it also included planning for the transformation of the bank’s technology systems and offerings.
The technological transformation remains critical because even though banking is a human business, our members are increasingly choosing contactless or digital channels.

Indeed, of the almost three million transactions we do each month, between half and two-thirds are undertaken using the bank’s payments tools. Another chunk of the bank’s transactions are via the mobile app, which does around 15% of the bank’s total volume. Internet banking is responsible for around 3 to 5% of transactions, while around 0.07% of transactions are undertaken in branch.

Overall, we are becoming a modern digital bank – because that’s how our members want to manage their money.
Critically, the channel choice most of our members have used for years is our app. Members told us we needed to get better at our technology if we are going to remain competitive – if we are going to be sustainable in the years ahead and continue to contribute to our community, to help members and their families get into a home or save for the future – we had to rebuild all our technology.

While the primary focus has been on the core banking system and our loan and deposit systems, we also had to update our mobile banking app due to the provider withdrawing the platform from the market.
If we could have dictated the timeline, we would have changed over the mobile banking app in around 12 months when we changed our core banking system. But we had no choice other than to launch it in September.
As a purpose-driven organisation driving long-term communal goals for our members, we must work with partners who provide capability that Border Bank otherwise doesn’t have.

We do that across so many parts of the bank, and it usually works, but when it came to the mobile banking app we could not seamlessly deliver with our partner – what was released didn’t match either the promise of what we had planned, or the performance in user-acceptance testing.
That has been frustrating and disappointing. At the heart of our transformation are our members and our team, and as a bank we let both you and our team down.

We have worked hard to fix the bugs over the past eight weeks and while there is a little more work to do, the vast majority of issues are now resolved.
Over the next 12 months, the bank’s modernisation will continue.
That will provide us the opportunity to offer better lending and higher deposit rates and will help Border Bank continue to serve our members the way they deserve, and in keeping with the way you, our members, serve our community.