When a fixed term ends, the loan rolls onto the lender’s revert rate — and the revert rate is almost never competitive. Lenders price sharply to win new customers and rely on existing ones not noticing. The weeks before your fixed period expires are the cheapest time you will ever have to fix that.
Start six to eight weeks out
Not the week it ends. A refinance takes three to six weeks once you count valuation, approval and the outgoing lender processing the discharge. Start late and you spend a month or two paying the revert rate while the paperwork catches up.
Diarise the date now if you have not already. It is the single most valuable date in your loan.
Step one: ask your own lender first
Call and ask to speak to the retention team. Tell them the fixed term is ending and you are comparing. They frequently offer a better rate than the revert, because keeping you costs them less than replacing you.
It is one phone call. If they match what is available elsewhere, you have saved yourself the paperwork entirely. If they do not, you now have a concrete number to compare against rather than a vague sense that you should probably look around.
Step two: work out what you actually want
Not just a rate. The decision has three parts:
Fix again, or go variable?
This is not a question about predicting rates — nobody does that reliably, including people paid to. It is a question about what you need. Fixing buys certainty and costs flexibility: fixed loans usually cap extra repayments, rarely offer a full offset, and charge break costs if you exit early. Variable gives you offset, unlimited extra repayments and the ability to leave, at the cost of knowing what next year looks like.
Splitting — part fixed, part variable — is the middle path a lot of people land on, and it is worth asking about rather than treating it as an exotic option.
Do you need features you did not have?
Two or three years is long enough for circumstances to change. An offset account matters much more once you are holding a cash buffer. Redraw matters if you are ahead on repayments.
Has your equity position changed?
If your property has risen or you have paid down principal, you may now be below 80% LVR when you were not before. That opens better pricing tiers and takes LMI out of the conversation. This is one of the most commonly missed opportunities at rollover.
The mistake that undoes the saving
If you refinance, keep the remaining term rather than resetting to a fresh 30 years.
Say you are seven years into a 30-year loan. Refinancing to a new 30-year term drops your monthly repayment noticeably — but most of that drop comes from adding seven years of interest, not from the better rate. It feels like a win every month and costs a fortune over the life of the loan. Ask for the remaining term explicitly; it is not always the default.
What it costs to move
- Discharge fee from your current lender
- Government registration fees
- Sometimes an application or valuation fee at the new lender — often waived or rebated to win the business
Break costs do not apply if you wait until the fixed term actually ends. That is precisely why the rollover date is the right moment to move: the expensive obstacle disappears on that day.
And sometimes the answer is to stay
If your lender matches, or your loan has features that would be hard to replace, staying is the right call. A good comparison should be able to tell you that, not just push you to switch.
What refinancing really costs · Compare repayments · Book a consultation
General information only — it does not take your objectives, financial situation or needs into account and is not credit assistance. Rates, fees and policies vary between lenders and change. Nothing here is a guarantee of approval or savings. Easy Loan Finance is a Credit Representative (CRN 568863) of Beagle Finance Pty Ltd, Australian Credit Licence 383640.
