Could you be paying less?
Almost certainly.

Expect around $600 to $1,200 in switching costs on a standard refinance. Your current lender charges a discharge fee (usually $150 to $400), the new lender may charge an application or settlement fee, and there are government mortgage registration and deregistration fees that vary by state (typically $300 to $500 combined). If you're on a fixed rate, break costs can be significantly higher and need to be calculated lender-by-lender. The good news: most of the lenders we work with offer $2,000 to $4,000 cashback on a refinance, which usually covers the switching costs with money to spare. We run the full cost-benefit numbers before you switch, so there are no surprises.

Most refinances settle in four to six weeks from application to your new rate taking effect. The timeline breaks down roughly like this: one week to submit the application and get conditional approval, one to two weeks for the new lender's valuation and credit assessment, and two to three weeks for the settlement team to coordinate with your existing lender on discharge. A few things can slow it down — a valuation that comes in low, a slow discharge team at the current lender, or missing documents on your side. We manage the timeline actively and chase the lender when things stall, which is often where refinances go wrong when people try to handle it themselves.

Start the review three to four months before your fixed rate expires. When a fixed term ends, most lenders automatically roll you onto their standard variable rate, which is almost always well above what they're offering new customers. This is one of the most expensive silent defaults in Australian banking. The ideal play is to have your refinance assessed and ready to go before the revert, so you move straight from your fixed rate to a sharper variable (or a new fixed) without spending a single month on the reversion rate. If your fixed rate has already rolled, don't panic — we can still move quickly, and every month matters.

A refinance application creates one credit enquiry on your file, which can temporarily drop your score by a few points. It typically recovers within a few months, especially once you're making repayments on the new loan. What does hurt your score is shopping with multiple lenders directly, because each one runs its own enquiry. Working with a broker means we can assess your profile against 40+ lenders using soft checks and lender policy knowledge, then submit to the single lender most likely to approve — one enquiry, not five. If your goal is the lowest rate with the least credit impact, this is the cleanest way to do it.

On a $600K loan, every 0.25% rate reduction saves you roughly $1,500 per year in interest. A 0.5% drop — which is realistic for a lot of borrowers who haven't reviewed their loan in two years — is around $3,000 a year, or $90,000 over a 30-year term. That's before any cashback. The real savings depend on your current rate, loan size, and remaining term, so we always run the actual numbers against the live rate sheet from the lenders you'd qualify for. If the math doesn't stack up after fees and break costs, we'll tell you to stay put. Every point covered — including the ones that argue against switching.