By Edwin Fischer and Ines Wöckl (University of Graz)
Many debtholders, whether private households, companies, or states, are caught up in high-interest long-term loans. At the same time, economic developments in the Eurozone over the past few years have created a low-interest environment in which prepaying an existing loan and simultaneously refinancing into a new loan can be advantageous from the borrower’s point of view. By redeeming an existing loan before maturity and refinancing into a loan with a lower interest rate, the amount of interest owed to the lender can be reduced significantly. Intuitively debt restructuring seems advantageous whenever the nominal interest rate of the new loan is lower than that of the old loan. However, prepayment considerations are more complex since debt restructuring entails transaction costs. These include a possible penalty for the early redemption of the existing loan, called a prepayment penalty, as well as credit charges and a possible loan disbursement fee for taking out a new loan. We use the method of differential investment to analyze under which circumstances loan and bond prepayments make sense for debtholders. We provide an exact solution concept as well as an easy-to-use approximation for calculating the critical upper limits for the nominal interest rate of the new loan up to which prepayment and subsequent refinancing is optimal. The calculations address both fixed and variable rate loans and consider whether the debt agreement is repaid at maturity or in annuities.
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