Andrew Wheatley

Well, you do know the answer, Craig, and I agree with the governor of the Reserve Bank 100%.

It's one of the strangest things out there that Australians don't remortgage more often.

The reasons why, well, there's a couple of reasons why.

There's a fundamental misunderstanding of how banks operate.

And it's almost like we've been trained to behave in a certain way that's not in our best interest.

It's probably easy to explain it like this.

Banks give all their best deals to new clients.

And I think everybody knows that.

When you first go to a bank, that's when you're going to get the best deal.

They're going to give you the lowest rate.

And if you're refinancing, they'll usually throw in a few thousand dollars of cash as well.

But there's a reason they do that.

Mortgages are incredibly profitable for banks and they know that they're going to make a lot of money off you over time.

You mentioned that the average loan stays around for seven years.

So banks are happy to take a hit upfront knowing that people will not move or most people will not move.

If you believe that, that banks are going to give that best deal to new clients, then it makes sense that you should want to be a new client.

And not only should you want to be a new client, you should want to regularly become a new client.

The reasons for refinancing more often are fairly clear.

The reasons that people don't do it are a little bit more murky.

Absolutely.