Abbey plans rate cut

Abbey National is this week expected to enter the multimillion-pound fight for mortgage customers which began when Nationwide and Halifax cut their rates last week.

Abbey, at present in the middle of a takeover tussle, is understood to be planning the launch of cheaper deals for homeowners to prevent them defecting to rivals.

Last week's rate cuts by Nationwide and Halifax will mean customers with an average sized interest-only mortgage of £60,000 are about £30 a month better off. The reductions left other lenders - Abbey National included - offering rates as much as one full percentage point higher and facing a revolt by their customers.

Such is the fight for customers that Nationwide chief executive Brian Davis on Friday fired off an unprecedented attack on the Halifax, accusing the former building society of misleading its customers about its new rates.

The banks' shares prices were also hit last week as the battle ignited and Abbey's retaliation, expected this week, may only serve to justify the anxieties that the banks' profitability will fall.

Second only in size to Halifax with 2m customers, Abbey is thought to be planning to take action designed to retain the 1.3m or so homeowners who are on special deals such as fixed and discounted rates.

Abbey, facing an unwanted £19bn bid from Lloyds TSB, is understood to be determined to keep its rates competitive.

It is likely to abandon the higher rate to which customers on special deals automatically shift at the end of the lifetime of their product. This would usually have been to its standard variable rate - at 7.5%, a full percentage point higher than Nationwide's 6.5% new "base rate mortgage". But Abbey will now move these customers to its so-called flexible mortgage package, which offers a rate of 6.75%, matching Halifax's new standard variable mortgage rate.

It is unclear what changes Abbey plans to make to the standard variable rate - which 700,000 of its mortgage customers at present pay - of 7.5%, almost two percentage points higher than the Bank of England's base rate of 5.75%.

Abbey National's "flexible" mortgage rate pledges to be no more than one percentgage point above the Bank of England's base rate, as does Halifax's newly reduced standard variable mortgage rate. This is also a pledge made by HSBC, the tenth biggest lender.

Halifax, the biggest lender with 2.5m customers, also insists that its new rates are designed not only to retain existing customers but also to attract new customers.

This is why it set itself a new target last week to win 15% of all new business in the mortgage market this year.

Rivals expect Abbey National, which last night refused to comment on its plans, to become an increasingly competitive player as it positions itself as a serious challenger to the "big four" on the high street while the competition commission reviews the implications of Lloyds TSB's £19bn bid.

The terms of the referral of the bid to the competition commission, announced on Friday, mentioned Abbey's position outside the "big four" - the term used to describe Lloyds TSB, HSBC, NatWest and Barclays.

Meanwhile, Abbey National and Bank of Scotland, its preferred merger partner, are expected to restart talks this week to take advantage of the delay the referral will cause to Lloyds TSB's bid.