Hi, i've been looking at some of the banks and it's very confusing as to what's best. There seems to be a lot of sneaky charges, so it would be great to get feed back from residents as to which bank is best for:
Mortgages: Rates and charges
Saving: Rates and account fees
Current Account: Fees and Charges.

thanks

We bank with the Commonwealth Bank, and are happy.

Our current account (called a savings account here) costs us $4 per month for unlimited withdrawals, netbanking and eftpos which is pretty reasonable I think.

Mortgage rates seem to be pretty much the same everywhere, although my lender at the Commonwealth did say that if I was offered a better rate elsewhere, to call her and she would see if she could match it, but at the moment we have managed to get a discounted rate of 6.19% so again pretty good.

Once our mortgage starts (next week!) we will not have any account keeping fees on our savings account either and we are taking out what they call a "wealth package" which costs to have each year, but you get a reduction off your interest rate and also no account fees on the mortgage, so you save more than it costs you.

All in all we are happy with the Commonwealth Bank and our local branch staff are great and couldn't be more helpful.

thanks, great info

as long as you have more than $2000 in the bank you will not get charged at www.westpac.com.au normal current account.
They do a maxi-saver account paying 5.25% at the mo for up to $20,000 and over that is 5.75. You can withdraw anytime, and they do mortgages toobut thats not my concern.

Spoke to them from uik and great helpful staff and i had cards and cheque book in 3 weeks a saved at a branch of my choice if i didnt have an address yet. Put pins on cards in the brach and off we went. Top clsass online banking too

good luck, hope this helps

al

and dont forget the first time home buyers grant of about $7000 too. only for one person even in defacto couple, everyones entitled pretty much, they sometimes take it off the mortgage before you start to pay it off, other times you claim it back which is pot luck really dependanty on who deals wi you.

al

We use Commonwealth. Very easy to transfer funds for arrival. Once we got here we had a few small problems with them getting things wrong but they were always helpful in sorting them out. We now have mortgage with them too (which others would not grant as I didn't have 3 months income at the time) which has given us free banking including a gold credit card with plenty of limit on it etc. One of the best things about this for us is we have a Mortgage Interest Saving Account which means that any cash we have spare significantly reduces the interest we pay on the mortgage. They also have ATM's everywhere which others sometimes lack.