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This audio version covers: AMP Bank Lifts Its Discharge Fee to $490 From 25 August: Recalculating the Refinance Break-Even

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AMP Bank has quietly reset its home loan fee schedule. From 25 August 2026, the discharge fee rises from $390 to $490 and the annual package fee on its Professional Package and Select Package lifts from $349 to $415. The changes are published in AMP Bank’s own Home Loan Fees and Charges Guide, dated 30 July 2026. For brokers, that leaves roughly three weeks to get discharges over the line at the old price — and a permanent reason to rebuild the refinance break-even conversation.

Key Takeaways

  • Discharge fee up 25.6% — $390 to $490, effective 25 August 2026.
  • Annual package fee up 18.9% — $349 to $415 on the Professional Package and Select Package.
  • $490 is well above market — CBA, NAB and Westpac sit at $350; the database-wide average is closer to $307.
  • The extra $100 hurts small loans most — on a $300k refinance saving 0.10%, it adds roughly four months to the payback.
  • You have a three-week window — audit your AMP discharge pipeline now, not on 26 August.

In This Article

What Actually Changed on AMP’s Fee Schedule

AMP Bank reissued its Home Loan Fees and Charges Guide on 30 July 2026. Two line items carry an explicit forward-dated increase.

The discharge fee — payable whenever AMP discharges any security — moves from $390 to $490 effective 25 August 2026. That is a $100 jump, or 25.6%, and it sits on top of the solicitors’ costs, search fees and state government fees the client also wears at discharge.

The annual package fee on the Professional Package and the Select Package moves from $349 to $415 on the same date — a $66 increase, or 18.9% — bringing both into line with AMP’s Equity Flex Loan, which already sits at $415.

What didn’t change

The rest of the schedule holds. The AMP internal refinance fee stays at $299. The variation fee stays at $299 and remains waived for Professional Package loans. The rework fee stays at $249 and the multiple security fee at $250. Basic Package, AMP Essential and AMP First Home Loan continue to carry a $0 annual package fee.

In other words: AMP has not repriced the whole book. It has repriced the cost of leaving and the cost of holding a packaged loan. Those are the two fees a broker is most often asked to justify.

The Numbers: Where $490 and $415 Sit in the Market

Context matters more than the percentage. A $100 increase reads as trivial until you place it against the field.

On discharge fees, comparison data compiled in mid-2026 put CBA, NAB and Westpac at $350, ANZ at $160, and the average across a full database of Australian home loans at roughly $307. AMP’s new $490 would sit around 60% above that average and $140 above the three majors charging $350.

On package fees, the picture is tighter but AMP still ends up on the wrong side of it. CBA’s Wealth Package, NAB’s Choice Package and Westpac’s Premier Advantage Package all sit at $395. At $415, AMP’s Professional Package becomes the more expensive option on headline fee alone — and ANZ, having discontinued Breakfree, lets existing customers keep their discount without an annual package fee at all.

None of that makes AMP the wrong lender — it wins deals on policy, servicing treatment and turnaround, not on fee schedules. But the fee is now a live objection, and “everyone charges about the same” stops being a defensible answer.

The Three-Week Window Before 25 August

The immediate, actionable point is timing. Fees are charged at the point the service is performed. A discharge that settles on or before 24 August 2026 should attract the $390 fee; one that settles from 25 August attracts $490.

Discharges are not fast. Between the client signing a discharge authority, the outgoing lender processing it, and the incoming lender booking settlement, four to six weeks is a common run. Any AMP discharge you want on the old fee needed to be moving already. That does not make the window useless — it makes it a triage exercise:

  • Pull every file where AMP is the outgoing lender and settlement is unbooked or booked after 24 August.
  • Confirm the discharge authority is lodged, complete and correctly executed — the most common cause of a slipped date is a form defect, not lender delay.
  • Where settlement sits close to the line, tell the client the fee may land at either figure. A $100 surprise at settlement is a complaint; a $100 forewarned is a footnote.

The same logic applies to package fees: an anniversary before 25 August should see $349, after it $415.

The Refinance Maths: How $100 Moves the Break-Even

The honest way to frame this to a client is a payback period, not a fee.

A typical variable-to-variable refinance in Australia in 2026 costs somewhere between $500 and $2,000 all-in once you stack the outgoing discharge fee, incoming settlement and legal costs, and state government discharge and registration fees. Take an illustrative all-in cost of $1,200 and compare against a first-year interest saving. The figures below assume interest-only-equivalent first-year saving on the stated balance and ignore amortisation, so treat them as directional.

  • $600,000 loan, 0.10% saving ($600/yr): break-even at roughly 24 months.
  • $600,000 loan, 0.25% saving ($1,500/yr): break-even at roughly 10 months.
  • $600,000 loan, 0.50% saving ($3,000/yr): break-even at roughly 5 months.

The extra $100 on its own moves that break-even by about two months at 0.10%, and under a month at 0.25% or better. On a mid-sized loan with a decent rate gap, this is a rounding error.

Why Small Loans and Thin Margins Feel It Hardest

Run the same $100 against a smaller balance and it stops being a rounding error.

  • $300,000 loan, 0.10% saving ($300/yr): the extra $100 adds roughly four months to the payback.
  • $300,000 loan, 0.25% saving ($750/yr): adds roughly 1.6 months.
  • $900,000 loan, 0.25% saving ($2,250/yr): adds roughly half a month.

This is the segment that matters. Clients on modest balances chasing a 10 or 15 basis point improvement are exactly the cohort where a refinance is already marginal — and exactly the cohort most likely to be told by a comparison site that switching is free money. A $490 discharge can be the difference between a refinance that pays for itself inside two years and one that does not.

It also sharpens the case for the alternative: where the rate gap is thin and the balance is small, a repricing request to the existing lender costs the client nothing and can capture most of the benefit.

Package vs Basic: The New $415 Hurdle

A packaged loan only makes sense if the rate discount plus the bundled benefits exceed the annual fee. At $415, the hurdle is higher.

The arithmetic is simple enough to do in front of a client. At $415 a year, a package needs to deliver at least $415 of annual value. On a $400,000 balance, that requires roughly a 0.10% rate advantage over the equivalent non-packaged product just to break even before you count the offset, card and fee waivers. On a $200,000 balance, you need closer to 0.21%.

Two practical implications:

  • Small-balance packaged clients should be reviewed. A client who packaged a $700k loan five years ago and has since paid it down to $220k may now be paying for a discount that no longer covers the fee.
  • The Professional Package’s $299 variation fee waiver is worth counting. Clients who vary their loan regularly — splits, repayment type changes, security substitutions — recover a meaningful share of the $415 through that waiver alone. Clients who never vary do not.

$299 to Stay, $490 to Leave: The Internal Refinance Question

One of the more interesting features of AMP’s schedule is the gap between the internal refinance fee and the discharge fee. From 25 August, restructuring within AMP costs $299 on settlement; leaving AMP costs $490 plus the incoming lender’s establishment costs.

That is a retention spread, and it will be used. Expect AMP’s retention team to be well briefed on it when your discharge authority lands. Brokers should be equally well briefed. Two points are worth holding:

  • An internal restructure that keeps the client on an uncompetitive rate is not a cheaper outcome — it is a deferred one. Compare the internal offer against the external option on total cost over the client’s realistic holding period, not on upfront fees.
  • Where the internal offer genuinely is the better outcome, document the comparison. A file that shows you tested the market and recommended staying is a stronger compliance artefact than one that shows a refinance you happened to write.

Best Interests Duty: Exit Costs Are Part of the Recommendation

Under the best interests duty, the cost of a credit product is not just its rate. It includes what the client pays to get in and what they will pay to get out. A recommendation that ignores a $490 exit cost — or that fails to disclose an annual fee about to rise 19% — is a thinner file than it needs to be.

Three housekeeping items follow from the 25 August date:

  • Update your cost comparisons. Any AMP scenario modelled on $390 and $349 is stale from 25 August — spreadsheets, calculators and templated client emails alike.
  • Note the change in file. Where you recommended AMP before the increase and the client settles after it, a short file note showing the client was told is cheap insurance.
  • Reissue stale estimates. A written cost estimate given in July for a loan settling in September is now wrong.

ASIC has signalled it will publish findings from its thematic review of broker compliance with the best interests duty before the end of the calendar year. Fee disclosure is exactly the kind of unglamorous, easily evidenced practice that separates a clean file from an awkward one.

The Broker Playbook for the Next Three Weeks

Concrete steps, in priority order:

  1. Run an AMP outgoing report. Every file with AMP as the discharging lender and settlement unbooked or set after 24 August. Chase the discharge authorities today.
  2. Run an AMP retained-book report. Every client on a Professional or Select Package is about to pay $66 more a year and most will not know why. A two-line email is the cheapest retention touch you will make this month.
  3. Re-test small-balance packaged clients. Anyone under roughly $400,000 on a $415 package should be checked against the non-packaged equivalent.
  4. Update every calculator and template carrying $390 or $349, and diarise 25 August as a hard cutover.
  5. Prepare the repricing alternative. With the RBA widely expected to hold at 4.35% on 11 August, a repricing request is a live option rather than a stalling tactic.

The Bottom Line

This is a small change with a disproportionate reach. A $100 discharge increase and a $66 package increase will not move a single deal on a $900,000 refinance with a 50 basis point gap. But they will move deals at the thin end — small balances, marginal rate improvements, clients already hesitant about paperwork — and that is a larger share of most broker books than it feels like.

The immediate job is triage: get the discharges that can settle before 25 August moving, and tell the clients whose settlements will land after it. The longer job is habit. Exit costs belong in the recommendation, not in the settlement statement.

Watch for a second lender to follow. Discharge and package fees have been comparatively static while operational costs have not, and lenders tend to move on these in clusters once one moves visibly. If another reprices exit costs this quarter, this stops being a story about AMP and becomes one about the cost of switching in a market regulators have spent a decade trying to make easier to switch in.

Sources: AMP Bank Home Loan Fees and Charges Guide (30 July 2026); Reserve Bank of Australia; published lender fee schedules and comparison data current to mid-2026.

Disclaimer: This article is for general information and professional development purposes only. It does not constitute legal, compliance, or financial advice. Fee figures are drawn from lender-published schedules current at the time of writing and are subject to change. Brokers should verify current fees directly with the lender and consult their aggregator’s compliance team regarding their obligations under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 and ASIC’s responsible lending guidelines.

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