Desperate Australian borrowers request urgent help from banks with home loans

MORE than 100,000 cashstrapped borrowers have rushed to get the payments on their home loans stopped in just one week.

Since the rollout of the new financial assistance packages, the nation’s largest four banks are among those being inundated by desperate customers seeking help.

Westpac has had more than 44,000 mortgage customers asking for a breather and that’s on top of another 17,000 business customers applying for assistance.

Westpac’s group executive of customer and corporate relations Carolyn McCann said the bank had been inundated by calls but said they were working to help customers as quickly as possible.

“We’re in the process of hiring more staff to help manage volumes,” she said.

“While we are encouraging customers who are able to do their banking online to do so, our branches and ATMs remain open.”

The nation’s largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank, has had about 27,000 home loan payment deferral requests to stop repayments for up to six months.

ANZ has received about 25,000 mortgage deferral requests while National Australia Bank has had 14,500 personal and business customers applying for loan deferrals.

The big four banks are offering payment breaks of up to six months and at the end of this period repayments begin again.

The interest during the paused time is also added to the total loan balance owing.

Aussie chief executive officer James Symond said mortgage brokers had also been inundated by people seeking reprieves on their mortgage repayments.

“Over the past few weeks we’ve seen an increasingly high volume of customers reaching out to their Aussie broker for guidance and support around hardship options, variations to existing loans and refinancing,” he said.