You have recently purchased a home or refinanced your home loan. Great!
Often, you are also changing your bank.
In this article, I will be going through a checklist to ensure everything is taken care of and you do not miss anything.
- Set up internet banking and ensure all of your bank accounts and loan accounts are there. Balances may not be updated until the next day.
- Activate your debit card and perhaps change the PIN number.
- Tell your employer that you have a new bank account. They will pay your salary into the new account. Also contact your salary packaging company (such as Maxxia), if you have one.
- If you have rental income, Centrelink payments or other regular credits into your account, change them too. Perhaps also tell some of your friends and relatives.
- Go through your transaction listing over the last 3 months. Identify any direct debits taken out of the bank account(s) at your old bank. Contact those companies and change them to the new bank account.
- Do the same thing but this time watch out for direct debits against the Visa Debit Card or Debit Mastercard.
- Think about any direct debits taken out yearly, half-yearly or quarterly, and change them too.
- A number of banks now have an account switching form. If it works properly, this is supposed to request your old bank to provide a list of all direct credits and direct debits to the new bank, then your new bank is supposed to send letters to each of those companies and request them to change the bank account details. However this process can take a few weeks or a few months, and some companies may not act on instructions provided by your new bank. It also does not capture direct debits linked to debit cards. You can complete this form just in case there are additional direct debits you did not know about, but please do not rely on it.
- Wait a month or two, then contact your old bank to close the bank account(s) once you see that there are no more debits or credits there. This includes offset account(s), as they are usually not closed automatically. If you want to, you can also copy across all of your BPay payees and account payees (e.g. friends’ bank account details), or just wait until you need to pay them and sort it out then.
- If you are doing debt consolidation (e.g. using a home loan to pay off a credit card), please remember to contact the relevant financial institution to close off the credit card (this is not done automatically).
- Repeat all of the above steps for your spouse. Perhaps print a duplicate copy of this checklist to tick off separately.
- Most loans have monthly repayment frequency, with the direct debit being on the same date of the month as the settlement date (e.g. every 21st of the month if the settlement date was on 21st of January). Monitor the first loan direct debit to make sure it has gone through. If your repayment frequency is weekly or fortnightly, the direct debit usually happens on the same day of the week as the settlement day (e.g. every Thursday if the loan settled on a Thursday).
- A number of banks offer “cashback” incentive which can take anywhere from a few days to perhaps 3 months to be paid. Ask your mortgage broker or lender how long it is expected to take, and monitor the payment.
That’s quite a long checklist, no doubt.
But hopefully you are liking your new property, or enjoying great savings on the home loan you just refinanced.
Please contact me if I can be of assistance in any way.