It is also important to ensure that clients have a clear understanding of their own budgets and expenditure, by not only utilising a budgeting tool, but reviewing their past expenditure as well. I tend to find that clients will always have a decent amount of discretionary expenditure and once they understand their regular discretionary expenditure, they find comfort in knowing that with a few slight changes to their regular spendings, they can comfortably afford the rate changes that we have had and will continue to have moving forward. 

As a broker, it is very important that when discussing new lending with clients, we calculate repayments on current and proposed future interest rates as well to ensure that our clients are well educated.

Melissa Wright, Zest Mortgage Solutions

Education is key

MOST OF the education is face to face, on Zoom meetings, or face to face with clients. So a lot of it’s in the appointments with the clients, just really understanding what they are trying to achieve, what their goals and aspirations are and then just helping them throughout that. 

We do obviously have marketing that goes out and we’re always offering to introduce our clients to other professionals who can educate them in areas that we are not licensed in. Be that financial planning or SMSF, or other accounting aspects. 

For the main core of what business we do, we have a lot of investor clients, who are either buying their first investment property or adding another property to their big portfolio. But we also have a lot of first home buyers and refinances too. They’re so interested in what I’m telling them and love the education side of things.

Emma Cattermole, Wealthfolio Financial Services

Being realistic and relatable

A LOT of people in theory could borrow a fair bit more than they’re comfortable borrowing, so typically I ask people what are they comfortable with. What would they be comfortable paying on a weekly, monthly basis? And then working backwards to where their affordability sits. 

Most people, particularly those we see in the regional locations, they’re inherently a bit more conservative, so I would say most of our borrowers are in a fairly comfortable position.

But we certainly have been busy on the phone just chatting to a few people, and making sure that everyone knows what options are available to them. And actually knows what the impact is going to be from a 1 per cent rate rise on their mortgage, what does that mean weekly? And how far in front are they of their mortgage? And what have they been saving… and all those types of things. 

We just really want to make it relatable and realistic to people.

Ryan Baddock, RB Finance

Saving through repricing  

FOR SOME people it’s too early for them to think about it, but we force the subject. We already calculate their repayments on 4 per cent, making sure they can afford it. And telling them how we can do it. Giving them the repayment at 4 per cent and hardly even giving them the repayment at 2 per cent… [That way], your home is not going to be under pressure in the future. 

We’ve had a dedicated team member who has been solely repricing our back book for a long time, probably for four years or five years, We saved $25,000 in February and $28,000 in March for existing customers, just repricing interest repayments. And that’s not the whole book that’s just the ones we got through for the month…. 

It’s rewarding for us and the member of staff that does it. That’s why we track it. I felt for a while there we were just going through this process of doing the work and not really realising the impact they were having, so we started to track it.

Paul Hixon, Loan Market New Farm