There’s (co-incidentally?) now an official webpage explaining what’s happening… and I can reveal the lender in question is our largest, CBA.

The bank details how its loans were ‘recast’, or recalculated, on July 31. This calculation used your current loan balance – including any savings you’ve parked in the mortgage – to issue a new minimum repayment amount that will keep your loan term at the full 25 or 30 years for which you originally signed up.

Then comes the sting: from September 1, if you’ve deposited extra but reduce your repayments to the now-minimum, your available redraw amount will slowly shrink until at the end of your contracted period, it is completely gone. With the recasting, that will be necessary to ensure you don’t fall behind on your loan.

The ‘sweep’. And bye bye Holy Sh*t fund, or holiday, or school fees.

Mortgage comparison website Mozo, which has been working with me to get to the bottom of the change that was understood to be coming, says this is different from the way redraw is treated by “most if not all” other lenders.