Fight Against Bank Fraud

The fight against banking fraud

Keeping you safe online through artificial intelligence and biometrics.

   Not long ago, robbers used to rob banks using guns and knives. Today, they use mouse and keyboards. Each year, there are a lot of Aussies becoming victims to online fraud which results in more than $2b in losses as reported by the Australian institute of criminology.

Among those commonly used fraud modus operandi today is the ‘phishing’ scam wherein the victim is drawn to the scam by clicking what was thought to be a genuine bank email from a reputable website. The moment the victim enters his or her log in details, the site or link immediately records these details and reveals it to the perpetrator or phisher. After which the phisher takes over the account, also called ‘account takeover’ and takes everything from the account.

Luckily there are a few online security programs that we can rely on in dealing with these fraudulent acts and as fraudsters get smarter, programmers as well have come up with better and more sophisticated ways on how to catch these criminals.

Here’s among some of those strategies that are used to day to keep online users away from phishing and other fraudulent schemes.

Analytics and big data
Back then, banks used to store information manually which was easily accessible even to fraudsters and thieves. Fortunately, their systems have also progressed and they now make use of computers and advanced programming in securing their terabytes of information and data while keeping it readily accessible for their transactions and business processes. Combining the new system of storing data and information along with modern security, fraudsters can now be easily tracked and prevented even at the very first signs.

Biometrics
Biometrics is also among those secure data analysis platforms that are used today mainly to authenticate users. Among those companies that offer such services include BioCatch along with Beaviosec. This platform works by analysing data such as rhythm and speed of keystrokes along with mouse movements when being logged online. The best thing about these systems is that they can also adapt to changes.

360 degree view
Another comprehensive security that can be used by users is the 360 degree view. This products gives banks a 360 view of each client’s buying behaviour, bank operation as well as trading patterns. An example of its execution is when a fraudulent activity is detected elsewhere using your card it can be immediately flagged and any transaction could be put to a halt using this special software.

Blockchain
Have you heard of Bitcoin? It’s electronic currency that aims to be super secure. Don’t try to get your head around that in one go. But as an explanation behind the ‘blockchain’ technology, it helps secure banking institutions from hackers. The Blockchain system is a very large decentralised database that’s now a lot more secure than yester years old banking systems,thats because the crooks would have to start hacking into every single one of the computers that contain copies of the identical information to gain any access your cash. As enterprises such as banking organisations start to evolve to intiating the blockchain system, you’re going to discover they’re able to provide you with a lot better protection..

Fingerprint recognition
The password is dying and methods of fingerprint and other identification such as voice, face and irises are expected to become more common. Banks are already using some of this technology in Australia. In addition to your fingerprints, face, eyeball iris scan, voice recognition can also be used instead of the normal passwords. Not to far into the future you will start to see banks introducing things like finger print recognition systems to enable you to authorise any purchases or transactions you want to make. It’s not absolutely foolproof, nonetheless and there are smarties out there who are going to figure out how to even hack your fingerprint.

As a consumer you also need to play your part in preventing fraud by being alert and avoiding clicking on any unsolicited emails, by always using secure pin numbers, regularly changing your passwords to sensitive accounts, don’t ever your PIN No. to anyone, and essentially keeping your wits about you.
Play your part and keep your money safe.

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Refinance Home Loan Value

How to get Greater Value by Refinancing Your Home Loan (yes please!)

What’s interesting in this day and age is the largest financial commitment most Australians ever make is their home mortgage, nonetheless once their loan is settled many just set and forget it, allowing tens of thousands of dollars to just slip through their fingers. Recent credible research shows that most Australians seem to get stuck in the mud with one of the four big banks and seem reluctant to change and usually for all of the wrong reasons.

Do any of these excuses sound familiar? “It’s just not worth the effort” we say to ourselves. “I can’t be bothered with all that paperwork and there are probably a lot of costs involved anyway. Plus the local ATM is just around the corner. I’m going to have to mess around and start changing all of my direct debits and bill pays. My bank knows me; I’ve been banking with them since I was a child”. Are any of these excuses starting to sound a little familiar?

The facts are, in this electronic age refinancing a mortgage is now cheaper, simpler and faster than ever before. The biggest individual expense of any home loan is the interest cost and the potential savings that can be made with a lower rate of interest is going to substantially outweigh any inconvenience encountered during the process. As an example, if you had a $600,000 mortgage on a 30 year term and the interest rate was 4.5% and you were able to refinance to a new lower rate of 3.9% your savings would be $210 a month. Come Christmas time, there’s half a holiday for you already.

If you have been entertaining the notion, but have been a bit lethargic about working up the energy, check the following seven step guide out that will help you streamline the refinancing process:

1. Clearly define your refinancing goals
A major factor of getting the motivational juices flowing is having a clear picture of what you want to achieve. Probably the most common reason anyone would want to refinance is to save money on the home loan by getting a lower interest rate. Accessing equity in the home for other projects is another common reason, or to find one that allows them to pay the loan off more quickly because of added flexible features.

You can also use your home loan for the consolidation of any personal debts you may have racked up. The big advantage to a home loan debt consolidation is you can take all of those high interest rate liabilities such as credit card and personal loan debts and refinance to the lower home loan interest rates to give yourself substantial monthly savings.

2. Check out the available options
If you don’t already have one, get a mortgage broker onto your list of must haves and get them to do all the legwork for you to see if there isn’t a much better deal for you out there. The broker will be able to show you all the options, like whether it’s better to stay variable or if there’s a juicy fixed rate option waiting for you out there.

 

The broker can show you all the comparisons when it comes to what the financial benefits will be under any given scenario. You will be able to compare apples with apples as a good broker will leave no stone unturned and they’re free as the bank pays their commissions, not you. Although some loans may have a slightly higher interest rate because they have added features such as an offset account as compared to a basic loan they can quickly analyse which one is best for you.

3. Calculating the switching costs
Nothing is for nothing, when it involves banks there’s always going to be costs to the consumer somewhere when it comes to switching your loan to another lender. Typically, all lenders usually have what is called a discharge fee to cover their legal costs of transferring the property title to another lender when you pay out your home loan with them in full. The fee can range anywhere from $200 to $350, with $350 being the most common fee.

There could be other fees such as an exit fee if you signed your current loan agreement prior to the 1st July 2011 after which exit fees were banned. Although, being charged an exit fee these days would be the exception to the rule as exit fees where based on a time frame over 3-4 years and most of those would have expired by now. Nonetheless, if you still have your loan agreement in a drawer somewhere it might be worth checking.

Should you have a current fixed rate loan, there’s the possibility of having to pay what is called ‘break costs’ and under certain conditions they can be quite substantial. You can quickly check with your lender or mortgage broker for a quick assessment of your loan. Additionally there may be incoming fees with the new lender that can include a legal settlement cost and some minor Government registration fees. These wouldn’t amount to much more than $400. Having said that your home loan broker can find you hundreds of loans that have no up-front fees at all.

4. Calculating where the break-even point is going to be
Once you know what costs are going to be involved if you refinance then it can be calculated how long it would take to recuperate those costs from the savings being made with the new loan. Some situations will take longer than others; it might be 1 year or only a few months. There might not be any savings at all if there are expensive break costs involved in refinancing a fixed rate loan. Every situation is going to differ from another, so it pays to examine the numbers carefully to find out what your bottom line is going to be and if it’s worth it.

5. Applying for the refinance
It’s time to submit an application if you have found the right home loan option. Credit conditions have tightened up recently. That said, your chosen lender is going to take a close look at your income and mortgage repayment history details as well as any other financial liabilities you are carrying. Therefore if you’re at all concerned about what your borrowing capacity is going to be you might want to consider cancelling or reducing the limits on any unnecessary credit cards, or pay off as many other debts as is feasible, as they can all reduce your borrowing capacity.

The new lender will want to find out what your home is worth and to that end they will order a valuation to be completed. With most lenders these days they don’t charge a fee for the first valuation, nevertheless they may charge a fee for any additional valuations beyond the first one. There are some lenders that will allow for multiple valuations without charging for any of them.
As soon as your application receives unconditional approval from the lender they will notify you through email or through your mortgage broker with a letter of offer and after that send out a loan agreement for your signature.

6. Discharging and transferring your old loan
Once your new loan has been unconditionally approved you will need to sign a discharge form to give to your old lender authorising them to discharge your existing loan to the new lender. The new lender contacts your old lender and gives them the signed discharge form and provides them with the funds to pay out your old loan. This process can at times be frustrating and can take up to 2-3 weeks if the old lender plays games in delaying the discharge of your old loan which frequently happens.

7. Finally the settlement
The last step of the refinancing process is the settlement and this is where the new loan funds are dispersed to the appropriate parties including yourself if you have requested cash out for any purposes.

Prior to settlement, most lenders these days will have created your new accounts with internet access including an offset account if it was requested. At the same time they will have set up direct debits for your new loan repayments. Once you have access to the new accounts you can set up any other direct debits or b-pays as long as you have funds in there to accommodate those payments.

You will now be required to make repayments on your new loan according to your loan contract agreement. However, if you have set up an offset account with your new loan this should happen automatically.

At the time of settlement your new lender will have submitted a ‘discharge of mortgage’ form to your local or regional Lands Titles Office that notifies the appropriate Government authorities that your old home loan account has been closed.

By the way, if you were to put that $210 a month saving back into your $600,000 home loan you would reduce your home loan term by 3 years and 7 months and save a massive $57,842 in interest. Forget the holiday, there’s a deposit for an investment property, what are you waiting for, give us a call?

 

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Mortgage Rate Bracket Creep

Have You Ever Heard Of Mortgage Rate Bracket Creep?

What is Your Current Mortgage Rate?

39506709 – bracket creep word highlighted on the white paper

We’ve probably all heard of bracket creep when it comes to our salaries and pay packets, which is where you can end up in a higher tax bracket as your salary or pay increases. That being so, I’m thinking about creating a new description for home loans called mortgage rate bracket creep.

As a mortgage broker I bend over backwards for my new customers and try and get them the best interest rate going based on the features of the loan they are looking for. Keeping in mind, there isn’t a one size fits all when it comes to interest rate quotes on any given loan. Mortgage brokers are attuned to what tolerances most lenders have when it comes to negotiating what interest rate they’re prepared to offer on a specific loan.

Interest Rate Influences
To clarify the above, the rate of interest a lender will offer a borrower commonly depends on the loan amount (higher loan amounts get a better rate), what the loan to value ratio is going to be can also be a factor. Commonly lenders will offer a better rate if the loan to value ratio is 80% or under. In other words the loan amount wanted doesn’t enter into Lenders Mortgage Insurance territory, which for a full doc loan is over 80%. For low doc loans that can be 60%.

The new game for lenders is (especially the majors), now seems to be luring borrowers through the front door with enticing offers and then slowly (without fanfare) gradually increase the rates as time goes by. In May 2016 the Reserve Bank of Australia lowered the official cash rate to 1.5% and since then it hasn’t moved. Nevertheless, many people are finding that their owner occupied principal and interest repayment home loan interest rate is now hovering around the 4.7% to 4.9% interest rate. So, what’s happening here?

Does Your Interest Rate have a 3 in Front of it?
However, you might say, “that wouldn’t be happening to me, when I negotiated my home loan or investment property interest rate I got the best rate going”. Don’t be so sure, typically for owner occupied loans that have principal and interest repayments attached to them we are regularly negotiating rates for customers under the 4% benchmark. If you’re paying more than that for your loan I would suggest you get a mortgage health check at your earliest opportunity.

Are You Better off with a P&I Investment Loan?
Lenders have also been making hay while the sun shines by using the regulatory authority’s edict to reduce their loan book percentage of interest only loans as a facade to increase interest rates for those loans. In fact some financial experts are saying that investors should get their calculators out and calculate whether or not it would save them money by switching to a principal and interest loan for their investment property mortgages.

The reasoning for that trade-off is to see if the savings on interest rates by switching to a principal and interest loans is going to be greater than the tax benefits that would received based on the higher tax deduction for the increased interest repayments. Talk to your accountant or mortgage broker on this one as I don’t foresee any lender being enthusiastically helpful with this one.

Lenders Lurking in the Shadows
While all this has been going on lenders have also surreptitiously been slowly edging up interest rates on owner occupied principal and interest rate home loans. My suggestion is, if you don’t know what interest rate you’re being charged by your lender at the moment, go and check your latest statement online and see for yourself. If your rate doesn’t have a 3 in front of it (excluding fixed rates), then it’s time to take action and either call your lender or talk to your broker and ask them what they can do for you.

Break Costs Explained Once and For All
While we’re talking about fixed rates it’s probably worth a small blurb about break cost penalty’s as many people get hung up on the fear of trying to break a fixed rate loan. For years banks tried to keep consumers in the dark with their Boogie Man story of the terrible costs that would be thrown at anyone who ‘Woe Betide’ even thought about breaking their fixed rate contract.

Here are the facts; the only costs that a borrower would have to pay would be the ones that the lender would incur. The lender would only incur costs if they had to relend the loan money you discharged at a lower rate than what they had you contracted to. In other words, if they were able to relend the money from your vacated loan at a higher rate, then they would be making money and would have no basis on which to charge you any fees for breaking your loan contract.

That said, if you have been considering fixing your principal and interest owner occupied home loan now would be a good time to do it. Rates are not going to go any lower, but there’s a chance the banks (not the Reserve Bank of Australia) will find excuses to incrementally start increasing rates. There are a number of other economic indicators that are starting to suggest that rates could increase in the short to medium term.

A Strategy Worthwhile Considering
A good strategy is to split your loan, whereby its part fixed rate and part variable rate. This allows you to have the best of both worlds by having the certainty of the fixed rate and the flexibility of the variable rate. Most fixed rate loans have limits on extra repayments over and above the minimum contractual payments they will allow you to make. Also, most fixed rate loans lenders don’t allow you to have offset accounts linked to those loans, although there are a couple of exceptions.

By doing what we’ve just discussed above banks are now opening themselves up to greater competition to second tier banks, non-bank lenders, credit unions and building societies. Additionally, keep in mind that the Government is about to put a levy on five of the biggest banks and we all know what that means. Yes, higher fees, charges and interest rates from those lenders. Therefore, it may pay you handsomely to start devising a strategy on how to save money on your mortgage.

Find a savvy experience mortgage broker who is going to put your interests first who know all the tips and tricks on how to save you money and at the same time enhance your lender experience.

Thanks for reading.

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