Heritage Bank records 82% spike in inquiries as customers look outside the big four

Heritage Bank has recorded an 82% spike in the number of home loan inquiries it received in February, compared with the average number of inquiries in the previous five months.

The jump in mortgage inquiries coincides with the Queensland-based bank offering its mortgages to all states and territories via mortgage brokers since February 1.

The mutual lender, formerly known as the Heritage Building Society, says 30% of the mortgages it wrote in February were refinancing deals, with many coming from bigger bank rivals.

“A significant chunk of those people were customers from one of the big banks who have started to realise the benefits of switching over to Heritage, Australia’s largest customer-owned  bank,” says Heritage Bank CEO John Minz.

“The simple fact is that we can often offer a better deal for our customers, because our focus is on giving them better value, not generating big profits to pay shareholders.”

Heritage Bank currently offers a standard rate variable home loan rate of 6.94%, which is 0.44 percentage points lower than the average of the big four banks.

“As a customer-owned bank, we pride ourselves on providing better interest rates, fairer fees and superior service whenever possible,” says Minz.

According to the latest APRA banking report, Heritage Bank has a mortgage book worth $4.1 billion – slightly up from the $4.08 billion in December 2011 – ranking it as the 13th biggest mortgage lender in Australia.

The lender has about $3 billion in household deposits.

Heritage Bank had the highest customer satisfaction rating in the country in the Roy Morgan Consumer Finance Satisfaction Survey as at December last year.

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