Financial Hardship
Sometimes unforeseen circumstances such as illness or injury, loss of employment or the end of a relationship or another reasonable cause can make it difficult for you to meet your financial commitments.
Get in contact so we can look at ways to help.
If your circumstances are affecting or are likely to affect your ability to meet your home loan commitments to Neo Prime, please get in touch with us so we can look at ways to help. You may be able to make a Financial Hardship Application, and request changes to your home loan like extending the term of the home loan and reducing the amount of your regular payments for a period of time or postponing payments for a period of time, or a combination of these things. Hardship assistance options are:
Repayment Holiday
Your regular payment pauses over the hardship period to give customers time to respond their circumstances. It’s important to understand that interest still is charged to the loan. This means interest accumulates and is capitalised to the loan balance over the hardship period. When the repayment holiday ends, your regular payments will be higher.
Extending Loan Term
Extending your current home loan term will result in a lower repayment amount over the hardship period. However, it will take you longer to fully repay the loan and you will pay more interest over the whole home loan term.
Repayment Holiday and Extending Loan Term
This option is a combination of the two options above. It allows for a repayment holiday to pause the payments over the hardship period and extends the loan term, so your regular payments will increase at the end of the repayment holiday (albeit more slightly than if you have a repayment holiday only) and you will pay more interest over the whole loan term.
Neo Prime’s hardship application is found at www.neo.nz/hardship
To assess an application for hardship assistance, we will need information about the hardship, expected duration and your financial position. We will need this information from each borrower under the home loan. Our application asks for information and documents that you will need to provide to support your application.
One way to make the application is contact us in writing at help@neo.nz or by post to PO Box 401, Christchurch 8140. You can also call us, and we will email you a copy of the hardship application form.
On receiving a Financial Hardship Application, Neo Prime is bound by legislation to keep to some timeframes. Neo Prime will:
Acknowledge the receipt of an application within 5 working days of receiving it.
This may be an electronic acknowledgement.
Request further information, if needed, within 10 working days of the applications receipt.
This may be an electronic request such as an email.
Provide a decision to the applicant within 20 working days of the applications receipt, or if we have requested further information then we will provide a decision within 10 working days after receiving all the required further information and 20 working days after making the request for further information, whichever is the later.
This may be by both electronic means and ordinary post.
There are community services that can help you manage your finances.
MoneyTalks is a free financial helpline for advice and support from trained financial mentors and they can also connect you with services in your community. You can contact MoneyTalks from Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm and Saturday 10am to 2pm.
Freephone: 0800 345 123
FreeText: 4029
Email: help@moneytalks.co.nz
MoneyTalks helpline — with free online chat service.
For alternative options for help with financial mentoring and budgeting visit www.sorted.org.nz and if you have been affected by COVD-19, Inland Revenue or Work and Income may be able to help.