Choosing your loan payments

You can choose to get loan payments as any of the following:

• a fortnightly amount
• an advance payment of the loan as a lump sum
• a combination of both.

Fortnightly payments

You can choose to get your loan payment each fortnight at one of these 3 loan rates:

• the maximum amount which is 150% of the maximum pension rate
• a smaller percentage
• a fixed loan amount that you choose.

If you’ve chosen to get a specific loan amount each fortnight, you can change this amount at any time. You can do this in your Centrelink online account through myGov on the Home Equity Access Scheme Summary page. You can also use the Home Equity Access Scheme variation form.

If you have a partner, they must sign the request even if they don’t own the property.

Advance payment

You can choose to get an advance payment of the loan as a lump sum. You can get this in addition to your fortnightly payments, or you can choose to just get the advance.

The most you can advance is 50% of the maximum pension rate in any 26 fortnight period. Any advance payment taken may reduce the fortnightly loan amount you can get for a period of 26 fortnights. You will always be able to get loan payments up to 100% of the maximum pension rate.

Examples

These examples show how much you can get as a fortnightly loan. They don’t include if you get an advance payment.

In these examples, the maximum Age Pension rate is $1,144.40 per fortnight.

Maximum Age Pension rate

Joseph gets the maximum rate of Age Pension. Under the Home Equity Access Scheme Joseph can get 150% (1.5 times) of this amount. This is $1,716.60, which is $1,144.40 multiplied by 1.5. That means the maximum amount of payment he can get per fortnight, including his loan and Age Pension, is $1,716.60.

He asks for a fixed loan amount of $600 a fortnight. This amount, plus his Age Pension payment of $1,144.40 equals $1,744.40. This is more than the maximum amount he can get of $1,716.60 each fortnight.

This means the maximum loan amount Joseph can get is $572.20. That’s the maximum amount of $1,716.60 minus his Age Pension rate of $1144.40.

Part rate of Age Pension

Joan gets a part Age Pension rate of $300. Under the Home Equity Access Scheme, Joan can get 150% (1.5 times) of the maximum Age Pension rate. That’s $1,144.40 multiplied by 1.5. The maximum amount of payment she can get per fortnight, including her loan and Age Pension, is $1,716.60.

Joan chooses a fixed loan amount of $400 a fortnight. This amount, plus her Age Pension payment of $300, equals $700 per fortnight. Because this is less than the maximum she qualifies for, Joan can get the $400 loan amount she chose. In total, she’ll get $700 per fortnight of combined Age Pension and loan.

A percentage of the maximum Age Pension rate

Chris gets Age Pension. He chooses to get 50% of the maximum Age Pension rate as his loan amount each fortnight.

50% of $1,144.40 is $572.20. His combined pension and loan amount won’t go below $572.20. Even if his rate of Age Pension changes, the amount Chris gets each fortnight won’t drop below that percentage. This is because we’ll adjust the loan payments to keep the total at the fixed 50% of the maximum rate.

If Chris’s pension payment goes above $572.20, we’ll stop paying the loan until it goes below that again.