Exit fee pushback continues to grow

The pressure to allow banks to retain exit fees has continued to grow this week.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank Robert Johanson chairman told ABC Radio National that the short average duration of Australian mortgages - four years - suggested Australians felt little constraint in exiting their mortgages.

Bendigo and Adelaide charges a small $35 exit fee. "Others choose to charge more," Johanson told Radio National's Australia Talks on Monday. "Others choose to charge more in application fees and charge less elsewhere. There are mixes, and I think that's what you want to have. Let different players, with different cost structures, present different packages to consumers.

"If we start banning one thing, it will simply shift where costs are recovered to other places, and restrict the ability of different providers with different cost structures to devise different products."

Rismark International CEO Christopher Joye, who has advised shadow treasurer Joe Hockey, told Radio National that removal of exit fees was "sounds good in theory but is potentially quite terrible in practice".

Most people did not understand that smaller lenders used exit fees to attract capital and generate returns, he said. He did not know of any smaller lender who supported the abolition of exit fees.

Professor Deborah Ralston, director of the Australian Centre for Financial Studies and a board member of mortgage broker Mortgage Choice, yesterday also criticised the push against exit fees.

"The suggestion ... that the removal of exit fees could be even a partial solution to this deep-seated and complex problem raises serious questions about how well the issue is understood," she said in a release.

Restrictions on exit fees are one of several measures being considered by the federal government for its banking reform package, to be released next month. The Greens also want exit fee restrictions. Hockey, in contrast, has not suggested restrictions on exit fees.