Redundancy, illness, relationship break ups and business difficulties can mean that your income and ability to pay for your debts dramatically reduce.

ASB is committed to helping you stay in your home if at all possible (see Our Commitment to Our Customers in Financial Difficulty).

We may be able to offer you ways to restructure your mortgage payments and other debts.

Mortgage restructuring options
Note: These options are subject to lending criteria and should be discussed with your branch, Mobile Lending Manager, or ASB’s Financial Help Team who can be contacted on 0800 27 27 35. Your circumstances may mean that some of these options are not available to you, but we will do everything we can to help.

• Changing your interest payments
  If you have a fixed rate loan at a high interest rate, find out if it would be worthwhile for you to break your loan contract and refixing your interest at a lower rate. While this may decrease your payments, an Early Repayment Adjustment fee, commonly known as a Break Fee will apply. It may be hard to understand why you should pay to break and reset your loan contract - go to our Early Repayment Adjustment section to find out more.
• Extending the term of your loan
  This will make your regular payments lower, but you will end up paying more interest in total because you are borrowing for a longer period of time.
  If you have a fixed rate mortgage, extending the term may mean you need to pay an Early Repayment Adjustment. It may also mean you can refix at a lower interest rate and decrease your payments even more. This charge for breaking your loan contract can be added to your loan amount.
• Going interest only
  By paying interest only, instead of principal repayments and interest, you can reduce your repayments without breaking your loan contract.
• Mortgage holiday
  This is a short term solution. While your principal payments (and sometimes your interest) are suspended, these amounts are added to your outstanding loan balance. This will extend the term of your loan and means you will end up paying more interest overall.