One call can get you loan discount

MANY mortgage customers are missing out on big savings on their repayments by simply not picking up the phone and asking for a discount.

Interest rates are continuing to tumble on fixed and variable rate offers — some are now below 2 per cent — but banks say only a minority of customers are bothering to take action.

Many banks, including some of the nation’s largest, recorded as few as one in 10 customers phoning them up in recent months to ask for a cheaper rate, leaving them stuck on inflated deals.

Another major lender said only one in four contacted it to seek a cheaper deal.

If a borrower on a $300,000 30-year loan paying a rate of 3.5 per cent received a rate drop to 2.5 per cent, they could save more than $58,200 in interest charges over the life of the loan.

Aussie chief executive James Symond urged people to be “proactive” to save themselves some serious cash.

“Banks and lenders will only react with the threat of losing your business,” he said.

“An owner-occupier paying principal and interest should have (a loan rate with) a two in front of it. An investment loan should have no more than a three in front of it.”

Latest data showed only one in 10 cash-strapped Australians who took out a mortgage holiday with the big four banks during the pandemic had exited the program.

RBA governor Philip Lowe has also not ruled out the cash rate falling further — even into negative territory as the economy fights to recover from the hits of the pandemic.