Charlie Weston

you will roll to a rate of 6.15, so an incredible increase.

So this is why there's a bit of a rush on at the moment for people who are, the 40,000 people who are coming off fixed rates this year, plus those who are due to come off later in the year or even next year, they're acting now to try and see if they can't lock into a new fixed rate and see if there's a penalty or not.

They want to protect themselves against a payment shock because, as we know,

You know, households are being hit with higher food prices, energy costs, health insurance, etc.

So, you know, it's a smart move by people to kind of lock in if they can at a decent rate at the moment.

That's right.

I mean, you know, the European Central Bank, its next monetary policy meeting where they decide on interest rates, it's June the 11th.

It's a two-day meeting, but June the 11th they'll make an announcement.

The odds are they'll probably increase.

One, that the governing council members

A man called Peter Casimir, he's a Slovak central banker, he recently said policy tightening, as he called it, in June is all but inevitable.

So in other words, a rate rise in June.

Now, Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, has been much more

circumspect and guarded.

But even if there is a deal of some kind between Iran and the Americans, there's still going to be a lot of after effects and likely to be risks of inflation in terms of fertilizer, food, oil, all of that.

So the European Central Bank would be keen to act.

And as we saw the last time in 2022-24, there were nine interest rate rises from the European Central Bank.

Yeah, I mean, you know, somebody buying a house at the moment, the average drawdown amount, David, is €360,000.

It's a huge amount of money.

And that's up €80,000 in the last three years.