If you fixed your rate in 2022, 2023, or 2024, there is a good chance your fixed period is expiring in the next twelve months. When it does, your loan will automatically revert to your lender’s standard variable rate, which often isn’t the most competitive rate that lender would offer a new customer today. If you don’t do anything, you’ll pay the difference every month until you notice.
The window to fix this properly is the 90 days before your fixed period ends. Here’s what to do.
90 days out: pull the paperwork
Get out your original loan documents, or log into your online banking, and confirm exactly when your fixed period ends. This sounds obvious. Most people don’t do it, and are surprised when their repayment jumps.
While you have the documents open, note three things: your current outstanding balance, your original loan-to-value ratio, and what your bank is currently advertising as its new-customer variable rate. That third number is your benchmark.
60 days out: model the options
There are typically four options at rollover: do nothing and revert to standard variable, renegotiate a new fixed rate with your current lender, renegotiate a variable rate with your current lender, or refinance to a new lender entirely.
Each option has different repayment implications and different costs. Modelling them side-by-side with your actual balance is exactly where a broker can help – we can run all four scenarios for you and present your best options.
45 days out: call the retention desk
Whether or not you plan to move, a broker can contact your current lender and ask what rate they can offer you if you stay.
You will be surprised. Retention desks have discretion that branches don’t. Brokers can typically get a better result, because banks assume a broker-attached customer is more likely to actually move.
30 days out: decide and act
At this point you should have three numbers on the table: what your current lender will offer if you stay, what a competitor will offer if you move, and what the friction cost of moving actually is. Sometimes the answer is to stay at a renegotiated rate. Sometimes it’s to move for a cashback and a sharper rate. Rarely, it’s to do nothing.
Make the call based on the numbers, not the paperwork discomfort.
Why this matters
Rate rollovers are one of the moments banks quietly count on customer inertia. They know most customers won’t check. The 90-day process exists so you’re not one of them.
Where we fit
If you have a fixed rate rolling off in the next twelve months, this is exactly the conversation to have with us now, not on the day. Book a 15-minute chat and we’ll run the numbers before your rate reverts.
