Westpac’s video which compared its extra interest rate rise to the cost of bananas has been removed from the website.
Originally the video was produced to offer a simple explanation of the global financial crisis to their employees, but the bank then sent it in an email to customers – who labelled patronising and insensitive.
The seven-and-a-half-minute cartoon begins with the words ‘Once Upon A Time.’ and shows a tropical storm decimating a banana plantation. The email was dispatched after the bank increased its variable mortgage rate by nearly twice as much as Australia’s Federal Reserve raised interest rates.