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What credit score do I need to refinance?

Bayley Clarke · Mortgage broker on the road · Last checked 3 September 2026 · 4 min read

The one minute version. The rest of this page is the detail underneath it.

Read the report, not the number

If your score is very low but you've never missed a repayment, there are no defaults and nothing weird going on in your credit file, then oftentimes yes, you will be able to refinance. The score is a summary. The lender reads the detail underneath it.

If your score is low because you have been missing repayments consistently on things like credit cards or your existing home loan, then of course the lenders are going to have some questions and concerns about whether they can approve you for their home loan. That's the part of the file that actually moves a decision.

Enquiries: annoying, but explainable

Say your score is low because one month you got carried away and put in enquiries for a bunch of loans you didn't really want, just curious if they'd approve you. As long as we have a story about those enquiries, generally the lenders aren't going to penalise you too much when it comes to approving a refinance.

The story matters because a cluster of enquiries with no loan behind them reads as shopping, and a cluster with a new car loan and two credit cards behind it reads as something else. I'd rather see the report before anything gets lodged so the explanation goes in with the application, not after a decline. The same thinking applies on a purchase: what credit score do I actually need for a home loan?

Where the score actually gates a refinance

A couple of the refinance paths that make switching easy come with their own credit-file conditions. The streamlined refinances, where a lender assesses you with a much smaller interest rate buffer than the standard three percent, are generally only available on loans under 80% of the property's value, with a clean repayment history, a loan that's been open at least 12 months, and in some cases a minimum score or a maximum debt-to-income ratio written into the policy.

Above 80% of value the options narrow again, and some of those lenders want a minimum score written into the policy too. So the same file can be a clean approval at one lender and a referral at another, purely on how each one reads a low score. That routing is most of the job. If your value has dropped, the refinancing over 80% page covers that side.

Missed repayments and defaults

If the reason is missed repayments or a default, then of course that's going to affect your ability to refinance and which lenders will actually consider you. It doesn't mean nobody will. It means the standard banks with the sharpest pricing probably won't, and the lenders that will are pricing in the risk.

The useful move there is fixing the file first: get the arrears current, get any paid default noted as paid, and if there's a default that shouldn't be there, dispute it with the provider before applying anywhere. Six clean months changes the conversation.