Most banks don’t reward loyalty so customers need to haggle for a better mortgage rate or miss out on $850 a year in savings, the ACCC’s latest inquiry has found.

The ACCC Residential Price Inquiry has found that “only 11% of borrowers with variable rate mortgages had the price of their current residential mortgage reduced by one of the five banks under review in FY2018”.

It found banks were generally not rewarding loyal customers, but instead offering bigger discounts to new customers coming on board. “An existing borrower with an average-sized mortgage could initially save up to $850 a year in interest if they negotiated to pay the same interest rate as the average new borrower,” the ACCC report says. “For many borrowers the gain will be much larger.”

And it found that part of the reason for such a small take-up — and why banks have not moved to reward existing customers as much — was that it was hard to get information on better rates, let alone change deals.