Switching banks takes a huge chunk of mortgage money

Nearly a quarter of all mortgages loaned in December went to borrowers switching banks – an increase of 94.8% over a year.

The RBNZ’s latest Lending by Purpose data shows $2.062 billion of the total $8.113 billion lent on new mortgages at the end of last year went to clients who changed providers.

The switching of bank mortgages equated to 25.2% of the total mortgage money lent in December. It is also the highest in a month since the RBNZ started collecting this data in 2017.

The more than $8 billion total lent was up a substantial 53% on December 2023 and up from $7.412 billion, or 18.9%, from November last year.