Comparing Strategies Side By Side

Strategy Analysis lets you put two or more mortgage options next to each other and show a client the real difference between them: the monthly payment, the interest they pay over the term, and the balance left at renewal. It's built for the conversation where the lowest rate isn't the whole story.

Find it under Tools > Strategy Analysis in the sidebar.

What It's For

A client is comparing your offer to a bank's. The bank quotes a rate, you quote a rate, and the client fixates on the smaller number. Strategy Analysis turns that into a side-by-side comparison of what each option actually costs over the term, so you can win on cost and structure instead of arguing over a few basis points.

Building A Comparison

You land straight into a fresh comparison with two cards: Their offer and Your strategy. Each card has two halves:

• Inputs (top): balance, rate, amortization in years, term in years, payment frequency, and the payment itself. Each starts empty with a faint example number as a placeholder, so you just type the client's real figures over it.
• Results (bottom): the payment (labelled to match the frequency you chose), interest over term, and balance at renewal. They stay blank until you've filled in a card's inputs, then recalculate as you type.

To add a third option, click Add scenario in the top right. Cards resize to fit and you can compare up to eight at once. Remove a card with the small x on it (you always keep at least two).

Rename a card by clicking its title. Each card also has an Add lender field; type a lender name and, if we have a logo for it, the logo appears on the card.

Loading A Client From Your Book

If the client is already in your book, you don't have to type their current mortgage by hand. At the top of the page, the client field (the one with the search icon) searches your refinance and renewals book as you type. Enter two or more letters of their name and pick them from the list.

Picking a client fills the Their offer card with their existing mortgage, balance, rate, amortization, and the term remaining to their renewal, along with their current lender, and drops their name into the field. From there you just give the comparison a title and fill in Your strategy to stack against what they already have.

The term we pull is the time left until renewal, not the original term they signed, so the interest over term and balance at renewal reflect the decision in front of them right now. If the name isn't in your book, the field still works as a plain text box, so you can type any client name.

Comparing Straight From A Refinance Opportunity

When you're reviewing a refinance opportunity in the Penalty Calculator, the Best Option card has a Compare button. It opens Strategy Analysis with both cards already filled: Existing loan on the left with their current lender, balance, current rate, and the term remaining to renewal, and Your offer on the right with the best option's lender, rate, and term at the same balance. Both cards start on the existing loan's amortization.

Match payment stays off so you can turn it on yourself when you want to show the cost difference at the same payment. Every figure is editable once you land, so you can adjust anything before you save or export.

If the client's mortgage is split into segments and one of them is a line of credit, Compare recognises that it's a readvanceable and fills that in too. The Existing loan card lands with Readvanceable already ticked, carrying the drawn balance and rate from the line-of-credit segment and the property value from the client's record, so the credit room is on screen the moment you arrive.

The two cards are set up to reflect what actually happens to the line on a refinance. A readvanceable sits under a single collateral charge, and a new lender can't take that charge over, so moving the mortgage discharges it and the line gets paid out at closing. Compare mirrors that:

• Existing loan shows the amortizing portion with the line alongside it. A line-of-credit segment is carved out of the mortgage balance rather than sitting on top, so a client with $1.29M owing and $100k drawn lands at $1.19M amortizing with $100k in the drawn field. Keeping the drawn amount separate here stops it being counted twice when the credit room is worked out.
• Your offer carries the full $1.29M, because the drawn line is refinanced into the new mortgage and there's no readvanceable on it. The client is leaving the product.

That is the right default for moving to a new lender. Two cases where the line would actually survive, and you'd model differently: refinancing with the same lender who holds the readvanceable (they restructure it in place), or a standalone second-position line where the other lender agrees to a postponement. In both, the line keeps its limit and drawn balance, so you'd tick Readvanceable on your own card too.

Clients often like to play with the numbers in front of you. When you came in from Compare, the Your offer card shows a Reset to original button next to Set baseline. Click it to put the existing loan and your offer back to the figures Compare started with. Any extra strategies you added with Add scenario are left alone, so you can keep building them independently of the reset. It's greyed out until you've actually changed something, and it steps aside if you make a different card the baseline (it returns if you set the original baseline back).

Setting A Baseline And Reading Deltas

One card is the baseline (it shows a Baseline chip in its top right). Every other card compares against it: beside its monthly payment, interest, and balance you'll see a small green or red chip showing how much lower or higher it is than the baseline. (With Match payment on, every card carries the same payment, so only interest and balance show a chip.)

Click Set baseline on any card to make it the baseline. That card moves to the far left so the comparison reads left to right, and the deltas recompute against it. Make your offer the baseline when you want every other option to show what it saves, or make the competitor the baseline to highlight what your strategy beats.

Choosing How Each Rate Compounds

Beside the rate on every card is a Compounding selector: Semi-annual or Monthly. It's per card, so you can set the client's existing fixed mortgage to semi-annual and a monthly-compounding product on your own card, and compare them honestly.

Semi-annual is the default on every card because that's how Canadian fixed-rate mortgages are quoted, so the payment and interest match what a bank would actually charge. Switch a card to Monthly when that option compounds monthly (some variable-rate products do). At the same quoted rate, monthly compounding costs a little more interest, so the choice moves that card's payment, interest over term, and balance at renewal. Each card's basis is saved with the comparison and printed on the exported report.

Setting The Payment Frequency

Under the rate on each card is a Payment frequency selector: Monthly, Bi-weekly, Accelerated bi-weekly, Weekly, or Accelerated weekly. It's per card, so you can leave the client's existing mortgage on monthly and model an accelerated bi-weekly on your own card to show how much faster it pays down.

The payment field just below it follows your choice. Pick Bi-weekly and it becomes a Bi-weekly payment field showing the bi-weekly amount, which you can still type over to pin a custom payment. The two accelerated options are where the real story is: an accelerated bi-weekly pays half the monthly payment every two weeks, so the client makes the equivalent of one extra monthly payment a year and retires principal faster. That shows up as less interest over term, a lower balance at renewal, and a shorter effective amortization. Plain bi-weekly and weekly just split the same annual total into smaller payments, so they land close to monthly.

Loaded and Compare-sourced mortgages start on monthly, matching how they're stored. When two cards are on different frequencies, the payment chip between them steps aside (a monthly figure and a bi-weekly figure aren't a fair dollar comparison), while the interest and balance deltas still line up.

Modelling A Readvanceable Mortgage

Some products put the mortgage and a revolving line of credit under one registered charge: Scotia STEP, Manulife One, National Bank All-in-One, MCAP Fusion. The selling point is that the combined limit is fixed at the start, so every dollar of principal the mortgage pays off frees up a dollar of credit the client can draw again. Clients ask what that actually looks like, and a plain payment comparison doesn't show it.

Under the monthly payment on each card is a Readvanceable (STEP / All-in-One) checkbox. Tick it and four fields appear:

• Property value - what the combined limit is struck against. We seed a starting figure from the balance you entered, so correct it to the client's real value or appraisal.
• Limit (% of value) - the combined limit as a share of value. Defaults to 80%, the usual uninsured cap.
• Line rate - the rate on the revolving portion. Defaults to 6%, the same HELOC assumption the refinance strategy cards use. These lines are prime-based, so they compound monthly regardless of what you set the mortgage side to.
• Drawn on the line - what the client already carries on the revolving portion. Leave it at zero if the line is untouched.

The card then shows two more results: Credit room now and Credit room at renewal. The gap between them is the room the mortgage frees up over the term, which is exactly the principal that card pays down. Anything already drawn on the line eats into the room and, if there's a balance on it, a Line interest over term row shows what carrying it costs at the line rate over the same term.

Tick the box on only the cards that are readvanceable. You can put a STEP beside a plain fixed mortgage and the comparison still reads straight across; the plain card simply has no room to show.

If the mortgage plus whatever is drawn already exceeds the limit, the card says so instead of showing room, which usually means the property value or the limit needs correcting.

What This Doesn't Model

It shows the room and what the drawn portion costs to carry. It does not model re-borrowing that room, and it does not model the tax treatment of doing so. A client asking about the Smith Manoeuvre, or about deducting interest on money drawn to invest, needs their accountant, not this calculator.

What The Projections Assume

The numbers are estimates for illustration. They assume the rate stays constant for the full term, compounds on the basis set for each option (semi-annual by default), pays on the frequency you set on each card (monthly by default), and no prepayment penalty. They are not an offer of credit. The assumptions line sits at the bottom of the page and on the exported PDF.

Next

• To make the cost difference obvious at the same payment, see Matching The Payment To Compare Cost.
• To save the comparison or hand the client a PDF, see Saving And Exporting A Strategy Analysis.