When Your Fixed-Rate Mortgage Ends: the Reminder to Set Six Months Early

Most expensive deadlines announce themselves. This one does the opposite: nothing happens on the day your fixed rate ends except that your monthly payment changes, and the change is usually upward.

It is also one of the few financial dates where the official guidance explicitly tells you to set a reminder — and to set it far earlier than instinct suggests.

What happens if you do nothing?

You move onto your lender's standard variable rate, automatically. No letter is required to make it happen, no signature, no decision. The FCA's description of the mechanism is plain: "your lender's reversion rate will normally be higher than your initial rate."

That is the whole trap in one sentence. The fixed rate was the product you shopped for; the SVR is the default you land on when the product expires. It is set by the lender, it can move, and nobody is obliged to find you something better.

For most people the payment change is not subtle. It arrives as a direct debit that is suddenly a different size, in a month where nothing else has changed — which is why it is often noticed after the first payment rather than before it.

How early can you actually lock a new rate?

Six months, and you can do it without committing. MoneyHelper — the government-backed money guidance service — advises that you "start shopping around at least six months before your current fixed or discount deal reverts to the lender's SVR", and is specific about the mechanism: "if your current deal ends in the next 6 months, you can lock in a new rate now without any commitment."

That last clause is the part worth understanding, because it changes the decision from a gamble into a free option. You can secure a rate now and still take a better one if rates fall before your deal ends. The main caveat MoneyHelper flags is on fees: "most lenders refund fees if you cancel, but a few charge an upfront fee that you won't get back" — so it is a question worth asking before you apply rather than after.

MoneyHelper's own advice on the timing is unusually direct: it suggests setting a reminder to review your mortgage up to six months before the deal ends. The guidance is not "keep an eye on it".

Why six months rather than six weeks?

Because the work takes longer than the decision does. A remortgage involves an application, a valuation, legal work and a lender's processing queue, and any of those can take weeks on their own. Starting at six weeks means the paperwork is racing the deadline, and if it loses, you sit on the SVR while it finishes.

There is a second reason, which is about options rather than logistics. Six months out you can hold a rate and watch. Six weeks out you take what is available, from whoever can complete in time — which is usually your existing lender, on a product transfer, which may or may not be the best thing on the market.

The people who end up on an SVR are rarely people who decided to. They are people for whom the date arrived while the application was still a good intention.

Which dates deserve a reminder?

Three, and the first is the one that does the work:

• Six months before the deal ends. This is the one MoneyHelper recommends. It is not "remortgage now" — it is "start looking, and find out whether you can hold a rate".
• Three months before. A checkpoint. If nothing has happened since the first reminder, this is the last comfortable moment to start without rushing.
• Two weeks after the switch completes — or after the deal ends, if you stayed put. Confirm the payment that actually left your account matches the one you agreed. This is the step almost nobody takes and it is where errors surface.

Set them per mortgage, anchored to the deal's end date rather than to anything a lender sends you. Lenders do write to you, but the letter arrives on their schedule, sometimes late, and occasionally to an address you have moved from.

In ReminderIt you can set one by message — "remind me on 14 March to start looking at remortgage deals" — and it reads the date back before saving. A one-off reminder suits this better than a recurring rule, because the date is fixed years in advance and does not repeat on a cycle.

Before you act on any of this

Two cautions that matter more than the timing.

Early repayment charges. Leaving a deal before it ends can trigger a charge that wipes out the saving. MoneyHelper's guidance is to check what your existing lender would charge and to "always speak to a mortgage adviser before deciding". The six-month window is about arranging a new deal that starts when the old one ends — not about breaking the current one early.

Moving house. If a move is plausible in the next couple of years, locking into a deal with large early repayment charges can be the wrong shape entirely, even at a good rate.

None of this is financial advice, and the best rate on a comparison table is not automatically the best deal — fees, term, flexibility and whether the product is portable all matter. What a reminder does is make sure that conversation happens while there is still time to act on it, instead of in the month the payment changes.

Sources: MoneyHelper (Money and Pensions Service), Remortgaging to get the best deal — six-month timing, locking a rate without commitment, fee refunds and early repayment charges. Financial Conduct Authority, guidance on mortgage reversion rates.