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Giles says TD will offer a “competitive rate” whether in a renewal letter, online or at an in-person meeting with a bank representative. Some mortgages include options like missing a payment or increasing your monthly payment, and the bank will work with the customer to find the mortgage that fits their lifestyle, he says.

The bottom line is do your homework

Is it worth shopping around? Giles says customers can always review their options.

“I think it starts with a conversation (with your bank),” he says, adding that homeowners’ lifestyles can change dramatically from when they first received a loan. “They might have gotten a raise, so they can pay faster. Maybe they are caring for an aging parent and there’s a bit more cost (and a need for flexibility).”

The Internet has made it easy to shop and compare mortgages and rates online, but Giles warns that it’s the equivalent of buying a suit off the rack. “You want to go in and get a tailor to make sure it really it fits you,” he says.

But McLister, a long-term mortgage industry insider, says banks have become more sophisticated about the way they target consumers, so the days of consumers simply re-signing for the posted rate are almost over. “It definitely still happens, but it’s not as frequent as a decade ago,” he says.

McLister says the banks are spending millions and millions of dollar to research what buttons to press for a given consumer, making the whole process far more scientific. “They never know what they can get away with (in terms of an offer) on an individual client, but they know from a portfolio level what they can get away with. They study the numbers and know if I offered X type of client profile it has had this success rate.”