Secured loans while you are on a fixed-rate mortgage

How lenders typically treat it

A general guide to how the market behaves, not a promise about any lender. Criteria change and every case is assessed individually. See the lender criteria database for named lenders.

Can you get a secured loan while you are on a fixed-rate mortgage?

Yes, and it is the single most common reason people take one. A secured loan is registered as a second charge on your home, behind the mortgage. It is a separate agreement with a separate lender, with its own rate and term, and it has no effect on the mortgage contract you already have. Your fixed rate, your monthly mortgage payment and your remaining term all carry on unchanged.

The reason this matters so much right now is timing. Hundreds of thousands of homeowners fixed their mortgage rates during 2020 to 2022, when five-year fixes were available at levels that have not been seen since. Anyone who needs to borrow against their home today faces a choice: break that fix, pay the early repayment charge and reprice the whole mortgage, or leave it alone and borrow the extra separately.

The Finance & Leasing Association, whose members write most of the UK's second charge loans, has described this as the main driver of the market's growth. Its data shows 44,725 new second charge agreements worth £2.4bn in the twelve months to June 2026, up 18% by number and 27% by value on the previous year, with loan consolidation accounting for at least 60% of new business.

One thing does not change. A secured loan is secured on your home, just as your mortgage is. If you fall behind on either, the lender can ultimately seek possession, and you could lose your home. That is the trade for the lower rate compared with unsecured borrowing, and it should be weighed honestly before you go ahead.

Why not just remortgage and add the debt to your mortgage?

Because a remortgage reprices everything you owe, not just the new money. Suppose you have £200,000 outstanding on a fix taken out in 2021 with two years left. To add £20,000 of debt by remortgaging, you would repay the existing lender, pay its early repayment charge, and take a new mortgage for £220,000 at whatever rate is available today. The £200,000 that was cheap becomes expensive, and that is where the real cost sits, not in the £20,000.

The early repayment charge is the second problem. Most fixed-rate mortgages charge a percentage of the balance if you repay during the fixed period, commonly stepping down each year, so 5% in year one might be 2% by year four. On £200,000 that is a four or five figure sum, and it is money that buys you nothing. Adding it to the new mortgage means paying interest on it for twenty years or more.

A secured loan avoids both. The mortgage stays where it is, and only the £20,000 is priced at the secured loan rate. That rate is higher than a remortgage rate, sometimes noticeably so, which is why people instinctively assume remortgaging must be cheaper. It often is not, once the early repayment charge and the repricing of the main balance are counted. Our guide on keeping your mortgage rate and clearing your debts goes through the logic in more depth.

Some homeowners first ask their own lender for a further advance. Many lenders decline that for debt consolidation, and it is not a route Equiclear arranges; if your lender has said no, that does not affect a secured loan application elsewhere.

Remortgage or secured loan on a fixed rate: a worked comparison

The example below compares the two routes for a homeowner with £20,000 of unsecured debt, £200,000 outstanding on a fixed-rate mortgage and an early repayment charge of £6,000 if that mortgage is repaid now. Both routes use the fixed illustrative rates used across this site. The remortgage route adds the early repayment charge to the borrowing, as usually happens when it is not paid from savings.

On these figures the secured loan costs £13 a month more than the remortgage slice, but £8,376 less in total, and that is before counting the higher payments on the £200,000 once it leaves the cheap fix. It would not win if the early repayment charge were tiny, if the fix were about to end anyway, or if the gap between the two rates were much wider than shown. That is why the adviser runs both routes with your real numbers rather than assuming.

What happens to the secured loan when your fixed rate ends?

Nothing automatic. The secured loan carries on under its own terms, and when your mortgage fix ends you have a decision to make. You can leave both loans running and simply move the mortgage to a new deal with the same lender or another one. Most mortgage lenders will remortgage a property with a second charge on it, though some want the second charge lender to agree to remain behind the new mortgage, which is called a deed of postponement and is usually straightforward.

Alternatively, you can remortgage for enough to repay the secured loan and fold everything into one mortgage. Whether that makes sense depends on the rates available at the time, the remaining term on the secured loan and whether the secured loan itself has an early repayment charge. Many secured loans have a charge for the first one to five years; some have none at all. Our guide on paying off a secured loan early explains what to look for in the agreement.

Planning for this from the start is sensible. If your fix ends in two years, a secured loan with no early repayment charge after two years gives you a clean choice at that point. Ask the adviser to show the charge schedule before you commit, and think about what your total secured borrowing will be as a share of your home's value, because that figure shapes the remortgage rates you will be offered later. Our guide on whether a secured loan affects remortgaging later covers that in detail.

When is remortgaging still the better choice?

Whenever the reasons for protecting the fix fall away. The clearest case is a fixed rate that ends within the next six to twelve months. At that point the early repayment charge is at its lowest, or has gone, and the whole mortgage has to be repriced soon anyway. A remortgage that consolidates the debt at the same time avoids setting up a second loan you may unwind a year later. Our remortgage on a fixed rate page looks at that scenario from the other side.

A second case is a fix that is not actually cheap. If you fixed in 2023 or later, the gap between your rate and today's rates may be small or non-existent, and the early repayment charge becomes the only real cost of switching. Sometimes that charge is worth paying for the simplicity of one loan at one rate instead of two, particularly if the secured loan rate on offer is high.

A third is scale. For very large sums against a lot of equity, the difference between the remortgage rate and the secured loan rate, applied over twenty years, can outweigh a modest early repayment charge. The debt consolidation calculator lets you test different amounts and terms side by side.

Finally, neither route is right if the debt is not really a cost problem but an income problem. If the payments would only work with a very long term, or you are already behind, free advice from MoneyHelper, StepChange or Citizens Advice comes before any new borrowing secured on your home.

What improves your chances

• Find your mortgage offer and note the exact early repayment charge and the date the fix ends, so the two routes can be compared on real figures.
• Check your mortgage lender's stance on second charges; most consent routinely, and knowing in advance avoids delay.
• Keep the mortgage and every other commitment paid on time in the months before you apply.
• Get a realistic view of your home's value, since combined loan to value drives both the maximum loan and the rate.
• Ask for the secured loan's own early repayment charge schedule, and match it to when your fix ends if you may want to consolidate later.
• List every debt you want to clear with balances and payments, so the affordability check treats them as repaid.

Alternatives worth considering

The obvious alternative is to remortgage and absorb the debt, which is right when the fix is ending soon or the early repayment charge is small; our secured loan versus remortgage comparison sets out the decision factors. For smaller amounts, an unsecured personal loan avoids any charge on your home and is worth pricing first, and a 0% balance transfer card can work for card debt you can clear within the promotional period. Where the debt has become unmanageable rather than just expensive, a debt management plan through a free charity may be a better fit than any borrowing, and our comparison with a debt management plan explains the differences.