Lender choice is more important than most people realise!

We’re so used to relying on customer reviews everywhere we go in life and, in most cases, these are accurate as we can compare to other similar experiences with similar products.

That approach just doesn’t work with a home loan!

• You’ll probably only apply for two or three home loans in your life
• You may only have experience dealing with one or two banks
• Who you deal with at a bank matters!
• The self-employed, first home buyers and builders have very different needs
• Banks get busy leading up to Christmas, Easter or the end of the financial year
• Valuations, documents being posted or ID processes are outside the bank’s control
• Government regulations cause a lot of complications and delays

In other words, most customer reviews blame the banks for problems that either would have happened with any bank or where the real issue is that they didn’t belong to that bank!

Which lenders did we review?

Disclaimer: Few of the lenders are not currently on our lending panel.

How did we review the banks?

We based our review on much more than just price. We wanted to focus on if they deliver a great result for their customers.

Competitive interest rates

We all love low interest rates! We didn’t just look at the price today. Instead, we looked at their historical pricing and if they tend to be competitive or if they lag behind the other banks.

What about specialist lenders? These lenders use a rate for risk model where different customers are charged different rates and fees. We looked at if they are charging fair rates for what they offer.

Flexible credit policies

Do they approve home loans for good people and decline loans for the right reasons? Do they see you as a human being or just a number?

Many of the major lenders use a computer algorithm called credit scoring these days. In these cases, we looked at if their credit score was accurate, if it discriminated against particular borrower types and if it could be overridden where it was clearly inaccurate.

Speed and reliability

If you’re refinancing, then you probably don’t mind if your home loan is delayed a few weeks. However if you’re purchasing, the same delays will cause a mental breakdown. In the worst cases, people miss out on their dream home because their bank is too slow.

Banks have special offers and get swamped by applications all the time so be aware that right now they may be slower or faster than we’ve assessed. What we’re looking at is if they tend to get things right or tend to let our customers down.

Reputable or dangerous

Every lender has a clause in their loan agreement that allows them to vary your interest rate.

The question is can you trust them?

The GFC was the perfect example of a time when the banks had the opportunity to gouge their customers. Which ones took advantage of their customers and which didn’t?

Some lenders also got slammed by the media and customers when in fact they’d reacted to a real increase in their cost of funds. The general public can’t always tell the difference, but we can!

This also takes into account if they’re genuinely there to help customers or if they’re genuinely there to help their shareholders! Customer owned banking gets a big tick in this area.

About the reviewer

Otto Dargan is the Founder of mortgage broking firm Home Loan Experts. He’s won Australia’s Brightest Broker twice! That’s no mean feat considering there’s around 11,000 mortgage brokers in Australia.

Otto combines extensive mortgage broking experience, great contacts within the industry, property investment and a passion for helping customers to get a better home loan.