How is competition faring on the banking market : AN emipircal study of changes in mortgage rates

Author: Martin Karlsson & Sebastian Dahlén, students at Karlstad Business School. Keywords: Bank, repo rate, changes, variable mortgage rate, margins, relationship, competition. Problem formulation: How do banks differ in behavior for increases and decreases of the repo rate. Purpose: The paper aims to examine how banks differ in their response to a decrease and increase in the repo rate. Two periods between 2002-2006 and 2010-2014 were studied to compare the competition on the bank market historically. Background: This segment gives a basic understanding on the bank market, interest rates and loans. Method: The study is a quantitative study of data for the floating mortgage rate over two time periods using regressions models. Articles, literature and reports form the basis of the theory segment. Theory: The paper gives a theoretical understanding on how pricing works on the banking market focusing on oligopoly theory. Empirical data: The data sample is based on secondary data retrieved from the banks’ official web sites. Analysis: The results are analyzed in a separate segment to give a better overview. iv Conclusion: The results show a correlation between the banks mortgage rate and the repo rate. The banks responses to decrease and increases of the repo rate differed for the years 2002-2006 and 2010-2014. For the first period banks were keener on decreasing their mortgage rates than increasing. The opposite relationship was found in the second period