Martin De Ruyter/Stuff Mortgage lending is booming as house prices continue to rise. Heartland and The Co-operative Bank are undercutting the lending rates of the big banks in a bid to win market share. None of the big four Australian-owned banks is offering a six-month fixed rate below 3 per cent, though HSBC and TSB are. The Co-operative Bank’s chief executive, David Cunningham, told Interest.co.nz that the bank had drawn down on the Reserve Bank’s Funding for Lending programme. The programme provided cheap funding for banks and was designed to support lending in a bid to help the economy weather the economic storm caused by the Covid-19 pandemic..