The email came on 13 October. Suncorp to Suncorp customers: if you have made advance payments and hold funds in Cashback/redraw, the minimum repayment at ANZ is likely to rise. One customer told the ABC the letter spoke of more than $1,000 a month. ANZ bought Suncorp in 2024, after the competition tribunal set aside the ACCC’s refusal. The transfer: hundreds of thousands of loans, more than a million customers by 2027. Sally Tindall, at Canstar: the shock, in June next year. This email is not a new interest rate. It is a different arithmetic of the minimum.

Suncorp let redraw and cashback pull the monthly minimum down. ANZ does not. If you do nothing, the minimum goes up. The rate, at the move, stays the one on that day, the bank told brokers. Variables, later, can change, as in the contract. Malcolm Stedman, CEO of Suncorp Bank: for most, no change. Those ahead on payments may see a higher minimum if they sit still. Tindall agrees: if you follow the email, you can avoid it. The shock is for those who do not read.

Her example: $600,000 owing, 25 years, 6.49%. The bank calculates the minimum on $600,000, even if you have $100,000 extra in the loan: $4,047 a month. Interest still on $500,000. If the bank includes the extras, the minimum falls to $3,373. Suncorp calculated on the “net” balance. ANZ, on the gross. The extras still cut interest. The minimum, not. Broker Daily: the increase can be significant, by balance, advance, term. Offset: only one account linked to the loan. Sub-accounts become ANZ transaction accounts and no longer offset the mortgage.

Erin Turner, at the Consumer Policy Research Centre: Australians deserve more certainty about what they pay. Most loans are variable “at the bank’s discretion”. The ACCC’s Mick Keogh, August 2023: not satisfied the acquisition would not lessen competition in home loans, in Queensland SME banking, in agribusiness. The tribunal set that aside. Governments, after that, approved. David Janetzki, Queensland treasurer: the deal was the former Labor government’s, Cameron Dick should explain why the protections were not in the arrangement. A spokesperson for Jim Chalmers: commercial decisions, we expect fair treatment, otherwise customers will look elsewhere.

It is not a fine. It is a minimum. Anyone who mixes it with the 0.25-point rise from 9 October, after the RBA, turns two letters into one. This is the platform move. The other is the cash rate.

Until June, the email remains. After June, what remains is whether those with redraw pressed the instruction or the shock.

Image: Chris Olszewski, Brisbane at night, 16 October 2026, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph is of the city, not a branch.

Sources consulted: ANZ's Suncorp acquisition could see mortgage payments rise upward of $1,000 — ABC News; Suncorp transition could bring ‘significant’ repayment increases, brokers warned — Broker Daily.