Standard Chartered Home Loan Refinancing

With a wide range of benefits to look forward to, refinancing with Standard Chartered lets you enjoy more than just savings on your monthly instalments. 

Over 160 years of credibility

As a renowned bank offering financial services in Singapore for more than a century, Standard Chartered Singapore has the "A" and "A+ '' credit ratings by Standard & Poor’s and by Fitch, and has been accorded the “Significantly Rooted Foreign Bank” (SRFB) status by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Savings on mortgage loan interest

MortgageOne is one of Standard Chartered’s home loan packages which allows you to offset your mortgage loan interest while you save. This package also works as a savings/current/payroll transactional account that comes with Standard Chartered’s Deposit Insurance scheme - an insurance coverage for all customers who finance their property and hold deposit accounts with Standard Chartered. 

If you’re in this category of customers, you can be insured for up to $75,000 in your Standard Chartered savings, fixed deposit and current accounts. Note that MortgageOne is designed exclusively for private residential property owners only.

Bridging loans for HDBs

Standard Chartered is among the few banks which offer bridging loans for HDB homeowners to pay for the downpayment of a new HDB purchase while waiting for the sale proceeds from the existing HDB flat. The tenure of these loans are 6 months, with low fees and competitive interest rates based on the SIBOR rate.

With the recent interest rate benchmark reform in Singapore, all banks including Standard Chartered have switched over to the new SORA rate, so as to comply with Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) regulations. 

So instead of pricing based on the former Swap Offer Rate (SOR) and Singapore Interbank Offered Rate (SIBOR), Standard Chartered’s refinancing packages for executive condominiums and private properties are now based on the 3-month Compounded SORA rate, Standard Chartered 36-month FDR (36M FDR) rate and Standard Chartered Fixed rates.

Let’s say you’re planning to refinance a condominium costing $1,000,000 while taking up a Standard Chartered SORA-pegged (3M SORA + 1.25% p.a.) home loan, you’ll most likely be eligible for a loan of $750,000 with a tenure of 25 years. 

Before Standard Chartered approves your refinancing loan application, they’ll assess your Loan-to-Value (LTV) limit first. LTV is the amount that you are allowed to borrow from Standard Chartered based on Standard Chartered’s assessment on your total monthly income and other financial liabilities and loans you may have.

You can move your entire loan balance (75% or less) to this new Standard Chartered home loan and refinance it after you’ve paid at least 25% of your property’s price or more.

Otherwise, you’ll only be allowed to loan up to 75% from the bank, which means the outstanding amount will still have to be paid by your CPF or in cash to bring it in line with the LTV.

Assuming that you’ve only paid 15% of your downpayment (and you’re left with 5% to be paid in cash and the other 5% by CPF), the estimated math will be as follows.

Your remaining downpayment:

$50,000 by CPF + $50,000 in Cash = $100,000

(at least 5% of the property price to be paid in cash and 5% to be paid in CPF)

Your estimated interest to pay for the first month:

Standard Chartered’s spread = 1.25%

3-month Compounded SORA = 0.1313%

0.1313% (3M Compounded SORA) + 1.25% (bank’s spread) = approx. 1.39%

1.39% x $750,000 = $10,425

$10,425 ÷ 12 months = $869   

(based on the 3-month Compounded SORA rate at 0.1313% as of August 2021 which will fluctuate over time)

Your estimated monthly instalment:

$2,961

(based on the above prevailing 3-month Compounded SORA rate)

Estimated total payment over 25 years:

$750,000 (principal amount) + $138,274.57 (in interest) = $888,274.57

*All above calculations are estimated using MoneySmart’s Refinancing Calculator.

Currently, you can pick from Standard Chartered’s 2 options to refinance your home loan for a BUC, which is either the 3-month Compounded SORA rate package or the 36M FDR rate package.

For Standard Chartered’s HDB refinancing loans, there are 4 types of packages which you can consider: the 3-Month (3M) Compounded SORA loan, 36M FDR loan, 2-Year Fixed rate loan, 3-Year Fixed rate loan, and the 3-Month (3M) Compounded SIBOR HDB Bridging loan.

However, Standard Chartered’s housing loan packages require a higher downpayment (25% of your loan amount) than the HDB concessionary loan (10% of loan amount). Note that you’ll need to top up any shortfall from the 25% downpayment before you can refinance your home loan with Standard Chartered.

Here’s an example to let you visualise things better. Assuming that you and your partner are keen on switching your HDB loan to Standard Chartered’s 2-Year Fixed rate package at 1.60% p.a. (36 FDR* + 1.00% p.a. From Year 3 onwards) with a 20-year tenure.

Having paid at least 25% of your property’s price with your outstanding loan at $300,000, both of you are eligible to move your entire loan balance to this new Standard Chartered mortgage loan and refinance it. 

Using MoneySmart’s Refinancing Calculator, the estimated calculations would be something like this.

Your estimated interest to pay for the first month:

1.60% x $300,000 = $4,800

$4,800 ÷ 12 months = $400

(based on Standard Chartered’s prevailing fixed interest rate of 1.60% for this package)

Your estimated monthly instalment multiply by 20 years:

$1,461.47 x 20 x 12 months = $350,752.80 (so this amount should equate to the total payment over 20 years)

In the subsequent months, your interest charges are based on the outstanding balance of the loan at any given time, and the balance decreases as more principal is repaid.

Estimated total payment over 20 years:

$300,000 (principal amount) + $50,753.90 (in interest) = $350,753.90

As compared to the HDB concessionary loan with a 2.60% p.a. that results in a monthly instalment of $1,604.36, you and your partner will save $ per month by switching to this 2-Year Fixed rate package.

Previous monthly instalment vs. Standard Chartered monthly instalment:

2.60% p.a. vs 1.40% p.a.

$1,604.36 - $1,461.47 = $142.89

Estimated savings in the first 2 years of refinancing with Standard Chartered:

$142.89 x 12 months x 2 years = $3430