Athena voted #1 by customers in Finder Awards

3 min read | 6 July 2023

It’s one thing to win an award through data and methodologies, but it’s another achievement altogether when you win an award from the people who use your services.  

That’s exactly what Athena is celebrating after it ranked in first place in Finder’s Home Loan Customer Satisfaction Awards. Voted by the customers of home loan lenders, these awards recognise what really matters to a borrower.  

Customers were asked to rank 5 different areas out of 5.

• Features and benefits – 4.5 

• Overall experience – 4.5 

• Customer service – 4.4 

• Ease of application – 4.4 

• Fees and interest rates – 4.4 

They were also asked if they would recommend their provider to friends and family. An impressive 89% of respondents said they would recommend Athena.  

There was no question that Athena came out on top. Its average score gave it 4.44 out of 5, surging 0.23 points ahead of the next bank. 

Where the majority of its competition scored in the high 3s or low 4s, Athena received 4.4s and 4.5s. 

Customers gave Athena its highest scores for its overall experience and for its features and benefits. 

• Automatic Rate Match. Athena promises to offer existing customers the same rates as new customers on their like-for-like home loans¹

• No fees. Unlike some other lenders, Athena doesn’t charge you fees

• Keep track of your loan on the mobile app. You can oversee and take control of your home loan from the palm of your hands

• Split your home loan. You can have up to 10 different loans against your property with the Power Up home loan

The cost of a home loan is top of mind for borrowers at the moment thanks to rising interest rates.

A high score for its fees and interest rates reflects the appreciation Athena’s customers feel towards its home loan costs. 

As mentioned above, Athena reduces the interest rate on a loan as the loan is paid down. It doesn’t stop there though. 

Athena has no fees. That means none of the standard fees you might find at another lender, like application fees, monthly fees, annual fees or discharge fees. 

It also doesn’t charge fees for those extra features, such as offset account fees and redraw fees.  

Overall, Athena’s customers are pretty happy with their choice of home loan provider – and with features and benefits like that, why would they not be? 

• Redraw from your additional repayments. The Straight Up home loan offers a redraw facility where you can make unlimited extra repayments and then access the cash if you need it. 

• Multi-offset accounts. The Power Up home loan allows you to open multiple offset accounts to help you manage your home loan and finances. 

The Finder Customer Satisfaction Awards run each year.

Finder asks customers across multiple areas to rate products and services. The awards cover multiple finance niches like lending, money transfers and crypto trading. But they also extend to areas of insurance and energy, as well as retail awards.  

For more information on how Finder (and the customers) determined this year’s winners, you can visit the full methodology here. 

This article was written by guest writer Rebecca Pike, senior writer at Finder.  

¹Automatic Rate Match. Applies to Athena's Straight Up and Power Up Home Loan products and excludes all others. A like-for-like loan means the product name (e.g., Straight Up) and LVR tier (e.g., ≤50%, 50-60%, 60-70%, or 70-80%) advertised to new customers must be the same product name and the same LVR tier that you have as an existing customer. 

The way we construct and name products may include a combination of the loan’s purpose (e.g., Owner, Investor), repayment type (e.g., P&I, IO), interest type (e.g., variable), borrower type, different features, or specific qualification criteria. However, none of these criteria will be designed to favour new customers over existing customers. If we ever offer new customers a lower rate on a like-for-like loan, anyone who’s on it will get the automatic rate-match.