After the Swedish Central Bank's latest interest rate cut of 0.25 percentage points at the end of September, the major banks only lowered their variable mortgage rates by 0.20 percentage points, which led to sharp criticism from a political standpoint.
"Damn it", said S leader Magdalena Andersson to TT and MP's spokesperson Daniel Helldén thought that the banks "should be ashamed".
Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson (M) believed in the magazine Affärsvärlden that it "sticks out".
High compliance
But Riksbank Governor Erik Thedéen does not agree with the criticism of the banks.
Our picture is that if you look at the mortgage rate, there is a fairly high compliance between the policy rate and the variable mortgage rate, he says.
Instead, Thedéen focuses on the deposit rates.
On the other hand, it is so that the banks' deposit rate is very low. So it is primarily the deposit rate where compliance has been weaker.
When asked if he thinks the politicians' criticism of the banks is unfair, Thedéen replies:
No, I did not say that, but I just said that the compliance was still good.
But then you can wonder if this margin is reasonable? The level difference between the policy rate and the mortgage rate, you can do everything to try to get down as households and it varies a bit over time and it varies from one household to another.
Gets change
Erik Thedéen says that the Swedish Central Bank sees an effect of its interest rate changes in society, even if the banks this time did not pass on the entire latest interest rate cut to their customers.
Should it be widespread that we do not get an impact of the policy rates on interest rates out in society, both against households and companies, it would be a problem.
This is what we call monetary policy transmission. But we think that the monetary policy transmission as a whole works well, that is, households and companies will get a change, he says.
