A refinancing boom is eroding the major banks’ dominant share of the $2 trillion mortgage market, as their customers shop around for more competitive interest rates with minor lenders.
PEXA’s head of research Mike Gill says the trend is particularly apparent in the key NSW and Victorian markets, and it has occurred while big banks removed some of their ultra-cheap fixed-interest rate mortgage deals.“If you look back to the start of the pandemic, the major banks were quite successful in winning more refinancing. Obviously, those fixed rates motivated many borrowers to move across,” Gill says.
If the bank giants had grown their new mortgage portfolios in line with their 75 per cent share of all existing home loans during this period, they would have expanded their loan books by about $23 billion.