With the ban on mortgage exit fees just a day away, early indications are that the change will be every bit as anti-competitive as the critics said it would be. While small lenders were announcing new fees yesterday, the big banks were marketing rate cuts, application fee waivers and financial assistance to help borrowers refinance.
Aussie Home Loans informed brokers and comparison websites that the application fee on its Optimizer range would increase from the current range of $250 to $500 (depending on the product) to $600.
ME Bank announced the introduction of two new service fees - a $150 valuation fee and a $150 solicitor's fee.
According to
Mozo, Greater Building Society announced that it would introduce a $500 application fee on July 1.
Some lenders, such as Homeloans, have taken a different tack and will claw back commissions from brokers if the loan is paid out within a certain number of years.
Meanwhile, ANZ launched an offer this week to pay $1000 of switching costs for customers applying for a Simplicity Plus or Breakfree Package mortgage. The offer includes a waiver on the $600 application fee for Simplicity Plus and on the first year of the $375 annual Breakfree fee.
ANZ is offering an 80 basis point discount on the Breakfree standard variable rate and 15 basis points on fixed rates. The offers runs until the end of September.
On Monday, Commonwealth Bank dropped the rate on its No Fee Variable Rate Home Loan by 13 basis points to 7.11 per cent.
National Australia Bank has been leading the charge on rates, through its online offshoot, UBank, which is offering a special rate of 6.59 per cent for borrowers refinancing. There are no application or administration fees. The deal runs until the end of this month, when the rate will revert to 6.79 per cent.
Westpac has not been as aggressive, but it did announce cuts to its fixed rates on Tuesday.
The managing director of lender MyRate.com.au, Kevin Sherman, said the change posed challenges for his business.
Sherman said: "We are still figuring out which way to go to make the model viable. Our interest rates will increase four basis points as an initial step. If we were to add an upfront fee, which to make this work after July 1 we need to, it would make our product uncompetitive.
"It is a very challenging environment already. The big banks are discounting heavily. As such, we have no opportunity to re-price our products."
MyRate.com.au has relied on back-ending fees to recoup the costs associated with lenders that switch lenders often. Its deferred establishment fee is one per cent of the original loan amount if the loan is paid out in year one (this works out of $3800 on an average mortgage of $380,000), 0.8 per cent in year two, 0.6 per cent in year three, 0.4 per cent in year four, and 0.2 per cent in year five.
Sherman said he had looked at charging an application fee and then rebating it after a certain number of years. "It is not a very clean solution and would not be easy to sell," he said.
Mozo marketing director Kirsty Lamont said she expected to see a lot more lenders increasing upfront and administration fees in the coming weeks.