Just thought I'd share my experience with Athena Home Loans. Refinanced from ING who jacked our interest rate up shortly after the loan settled, while advertising a lower interest rate for "new customers". Very frustrating.
Decided to switch to Athena who offered 1.99% variable rate and provide a guarantee that they will always offer existing customers the same rate as new customers. Has been awesome so far and they have honoured the guarantee.
Anyone else have an experience like this?
Why would they contact you are rejecting you?
To really rub in the rejection.
Contacted them years ago to enquiry refinance and got rejected on the call because serviceability issue.
It is the type of lender that only lend money to the safest customers like a first home buyer with low LVC or low loan amount etc.
Loooong drawn out process even with all information provided.
3 months for a simple 120k refinance.
Very similar experience here. It's taken ages to refinance with them.
Hoping it'll be worth it!
I liked the $500 referral bonus :) I believe it's currently $250. To get a referral code use the below link
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/deals/athena.com.au
I also got tired of arguing with ING over 10 basis points, so switched to Athena knowing I will automatically get the latest offering to new customers without even asking :) I also cannot fault their customer service - their staff appear to give accurate and consise information every time I've dealt with them, and they respond very quickly to enquiries.
Think I don't like so much about Athena:
1. Although easy to use and modern looking, the website is a bit basic.
2. I don't like that you have to get an SMS code just to login and view your account. Athena should make it so this is only needed if transferring funds out of the home loan.
3. You can't make the required fortnightly/monthly minimum repayments by any method other than direct debit. So if you want to pay varying amounts each pay, you'll have to account for the direct debit amount then work out how much extra to pay by direct deposit to your Athena account. Hopefully Athena introduces more options soon, eg. a direct salary credit (this is mentioned in the loan contract as a possible option but it isn't actually available yet)
4. If you pay above the minimum by direct debit, there will be two separate transactions - eg if your minimum is $600/fn and you want to make a regular payment of $800/fn, you'll have a $600 transaction plus a $200 transaction.
5. You can't change the direct debit account through the website - you have to fill out a paper form and send it in to Athena. At least you can do this by email :)
6. If you're making extra regular payments, you can't change the amount or cancel these through the website.
7. There isn't a mobile app (though the mobile site is very good).
Good to see that no one else has been rate jacked, I will probably stick with them just for that.
Fair call re: the basicness of the website. Its a very basic vanilla style product. Would be good to see the ability to do loan splits and things like that down the track too.
I still haven't received my $500 referral bonus 6 weeks after settlement. I contacted them at week 2 and they said it would take up to 3 weeks…lying.
Switch to Athena 1 month ago from Bank of Melbourne and pretty impressed so far. They just keep everything so simple where I felt BOM really over-complicated things. Athena's app is coming early 2022 which I'm happy about. They have also started offset accounts and instead of having to ring/email/fill out forms to get the offset account, you just log in, and toggle the option for the offset to 'ON'. This kind of simplicity really impresses me. Congrats to the Ozbargainer that scored $250 from me using their referral. :)
With the UK just recently increasing their interest rate, and when it happens here. And with Athena's fixed rates being pretty average.
Would you continue to stay?
Athena is one of these lenders that only takes super prime loans, which means the top end customer only.
The big 4 banks also offer some really good rates for super prime customer, its worthwhile to shop around.
They reject my application when refinancing. And never contact me anymore.