Lenders put a higher price on disloyalty

Remortgaging seems very unrewarding right now. The last time I switched mortgages, you could get a two-year fixed rate for 3.5 per cent, with valuation and legal fees thrown in. Even with a typical upfront 'application' fee of £350, this was still a great deal.

Two years on, the base rate has gone up, lenders have a new raft of regulations to pay for, and competition is fiercer than ever. They have responded by cutting rates as much as possible while clawing money back through hefty fees. You can expect to pay as much as £695 for a fixed-rate loan from Northern Rock.

But the hike in exit fees payable when you switch lenders is even more of an insult. I don't mean the early redemption penalties payable if you clear your loan within the special deal period of your mortgage, but fees that you have to pay if you move your mortgage after your last special deal ends. Alliance & Leicester, which upped its exit fee by £100 to £295 last summer, is the worst offender. Northern Rock - surprise, surprise - comes second with a £250 exit fee.

My mortgage broker from London & Country says lenders are using the fees to encourage loyalty in their mortgage customers, but this seems a very strange way to inspire loyalty to me. Being a very honest and altruistic man, he recommends that I switch from Alliance & Leicester to a low rate lifetime tracker mortgage sold by the Saffron Walden Herts & Essex Building Society - a move that will ultimately cost him my remortgage business. The interest rate is a bit higher, but once you add in the fees that I would have to pay every time I remortgaged, I should be quids in.

Nearly 6 out of 10 Britons with outstanding debts have no idea about how much they owe, and eight out of 10 say this lack of knowledge doesn't concern them. According to a survey by credit reference agency Callcredit women are worse at keeping track of their debts than men, while people in the East of England feel the most burdened by their borrowing.

That so many are not keeping tabs on their borrowings is not surprising. When you are deep in debt, it's frightening to face up to the size of your problems. But the fact that 8 out of 10 are so blasé about the situation is very worrying. How are they supposed to manage and repay their debt if they don't know how much they've built up?

Of the 59 per cent who said they didn't know the size of their borrowings, only 14 per cent said they had reached their credit limit. But by failing to keep tabs on their debts, the rest are leaving themselves exposed to fraudulent use of their accounts.

After all, if they don't look at their statements, how are they to know if someone has skimmed their credit card or intercepted a replacement chequebook in the post?