A refinance mortgage broker who does the arithmetic first

The FinSavvy Rate Review, included with every loan

Refinancing with us does not end at settlement. Every loan we write goes onto a six-monthly review for its whole life: we re-check the rate against what lenders are currently writing, and tell you plainly whether it still stacks up.

When it does not, we take it to your lender first, because a repricing request from a broker holding a genuine alternative lands differently than a customer asking politely. If they will not move, you will know exactly what switching is worth in dollars and months. That is how the loyalty tax stays gone instead of quietly returning.

• Recent payslips or business financials, plus your latest tax assessment.
• Statements for the loan being refinanced and any other debts.
• Transaction statements covering your regular spending.
• Identification and current home insurance details.
• A rough sense of your property value.

When refinancing makes sense, and when it does not

Refinancing only pays when the numbers say so, which is why our Pymble team starts with the arithmetic rather than a rate table.

Charlie runs most of our refinance work from West Pymble, and a decent share of the time the honest answer is to stay put and renegotiate instead. This page explains how we tell the difference.

The strongest cases share a shape: a fixed rate about to revert to something unpleasant, a loan nobody has looked at in years, or circumstances that have moved far enough that the original structure no longer fits. Lenders keep their sharpest pricing for new customers. Existing borrowers drift upward quietly, which is the whole mechanism of the loyalty tax.

The reverse cases are just as real, and a broker who says otherwise is selling rather than advising. If your remaining balance is small, switching costs can eat years of savings. If you plan to sell soon, the payback window may never arrive at all. And if your equity is thin, moving lenders can re-trigger lenders mortgage insurance, a cost that wipes out the benefit in a single line on our LMI estimator. We will tell you which side of that line you are on before you fill in anything.

The costs nobody mentions in the ad

An honest comparison starts by listing the friction: a discharge fee from your current lender, government registration and discharge fees, and sometimes application or valuation costs at the new one. Fixed-rate loans add break costs, which move with markets and can be large. Your current lender must quote them on request. We always ask before modelling anything.

Cashback offers deserve their own caution, because a lender paying you to switch is pricing that payment somewhere, usually into the rate you drift onto in year three. Sometimes the cashback genuinely wins. Often it is a headline wrapped around a worse loan, and our opinion, which the comparison sites will dispute, is that chasing cashbacks is the single most reliable way to end up refinancing again two years later.

Who this is for

Your fixed rate is ending and the revert rate looks steep, or you have not reviewed the loan since you took it out and suspect you are paying a loyalty tax. Others arrive wanting to consolidate debts or pull equity for a renovation.

Either way the question is the same: does switching actually pay once every cost is counted?

How the process works

1. We review what you have. Current rate, structure, fees, and how it compares to what lenders are writing this month.
2. We ask your lender first. A repricing request often beats a switch on speed and cost. We make that call before recommending anything else, because it is frequently the fastest win available.
3. We price the switch honestly. Break costs, discharge fees and setup costs included, with the payback period stated in months.
4. We handle the paperwork. Discharge forms, the new application, settlement between two lenders. That middle part is where self-managed refinances stall, so we run it end to end.

What a broker does that a bank doesn’t

Your bank has no incentive to mention a cheaper competitor, and its retention desk only appears once you look like you are leaving. We compare across the panel, cost the switch properly rather than quoting a headline rate, and manage the discharge that most people underestimate.

Then the loan goes on review every six months for its whole life.