In this blog, Co-Founder Sean Murphy will cover off on three very important topics you need to be aware of in the coming days and months.

1. Rate Tracker v2.0 is going live in the coming days – This is not a scam.
2. Are we nearing the peak of the rate cycle
3. Be as vigilant on the way down as you were on the way up

Let’s break down those points for you.

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RT v2.0

Rate Tracker is currently built on an older system of open banking known as “Screen Scraping”. This means that when you signed up to RateTracker, you authorised a token to sit against your loan that allowed RateTracker to essentially read your home loan statement. This means it was able to look and  find the interest rate, the loan balance, and the repayment. It was brilliant technology…. In 2018…

As a company, we have spent over one hundred hours in development to prepare for an upgrade to our system. We have completed our SOC2– Type I audit which means our systems, client data handling processes and security are all up to scratch. In order to get accredited as a representative on the Australian Governments Consumer Data Right list, we had to show them that we had made the necessary investment in our infrastructure to ensure your data is safe, and used in the way we say we are using it. Essentially making sure there’s no funny business or risk to you as a Rate Tracker user.

IMPORTANT: As part of this process, if your bank participates in the full open baking model, you may receive a notification in your banking app, or a push notification, stating you need to reauthorise your connection. Under the new system the token can only last 365 days then you need to consent to continue using the service. This is so we can always ensure you are happy with the service and what value we are providing you.

When is the peak… please… someone?!?!?!?

If I truly knew the answer to this question, I would be sipping a cocktail on Necker Island, as I would have brought it off Richard Branson by now. The global market is in a tricky position right now. In the past 40 years, we have had some big global financial resets, the 90’s recession, dot com bubble yeh early 2000’s, the GFC. But the circumstances were a bit different. There have not been mass layoffs, unemployment has remained strong, housing is scarce for both buyers and renters, so values have held up better than what we thought. But people are starting to bleed financially, cutting back on recreation and entertainment, rising rents are killing people’s budgets, increased food and basics means that the government has started to tread carefully with the rate rises. They talk a lot of shit about Inflation on the news and a lot of people don’t even truly know what this means, they are just lead to believe it’s bad. Inflation is necessary to continue to push the nation forward, but it is far too high at the minute due to the amount of money flying around the past few years, some of that cash needs to be taken back out of circulation, to give our hard earned dollars some value back to be able to buy us more stuff with it.

We are seeing extremely early and not yet validated signs in Australian markets that the peak could be near. 3 of the 4 major banks have changed their tune from:

• “2 or 3 more rate rises”  to,  “We are at the peak already”.
• They have also changed their property forecasts from “-1% in 2024 to +3% in 2024” – this would be less likely if the rates were still climbing.

We are slowly starting to see a shift in sentiment, and quite often 3 of the 4 major banks aren’t wrong. So, we are hoping that at most there is 1 or less more. But it is too early to tell. We don’t have any huge indicators coming out this next couple of weeks. Other than some data from China we’re basically in a wait and hope phase. So, we’ll keep you posted as we learn anything new.

Banks love rapid change, be careful out.

Whether we are moving up or down, banks like the change. It gives them an opportunity to get creative with their pricing. They will often change pricing on the front end for new customers to attract new lending opportunities. But they will leave the back book on the same discounts they were offered when their loans were taken. No periodic changes or reviews at all. This is one of the sole reasons we built Rate Tracker. It picks up on these tricks and in no more than 30 days.

So right now in August 2023 – the discounts are absolutely terrible!! So all the customers right now might be getting the best possible rate right now, but when the pricing starts to improve, they will stay on their current discount and their bank will not alert them they are now offering larger discounts. It will be play on and that is the way the bank like it. RateTracker doesn’t allow this to happen which is why it was more important than ever to upgrade to v2.0 to improve the quality of the data we are getting from our clients banks.

So, we will always push out information on this but do feel free to reach us at info@ratetracker.com.auif you want to have yours reviewed out of sync.

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