This provides you with an opportunity to pay off your mortgage quicker and cheaper. However, you won't receive any of the interest on your savings account or current account.

Base rates are currently low, which means that instead of getting small amounts of interest on your bank accounts, they work to reduce your mortgage payments, helping you to get it paid off sooner.

If you have other debts, including credit cards and personal loans, etc. These can all be repayed at the mortgage rate, which will probably be lower than the rate on those borrowings.

Another advantage is that credit cards and loans remain unsecured borrowings, despite being paid off at the mortgage rate.

It is important to remember that by consolidating debts into your offset mortgage, you are changing your short-term debt into long-term debt, so you should ensure these are paid off sooner rather than later, otherwise it will cost more in the long run.

Basically, you are pouring your savings into your mortgage in order to pay it off, without sacrificing easy access to the accounts, and the funds. It is expected that by 2005, offset mortgages will represent a quarter of the mortgage market.

Those who have large savings accounts will find offset mortgages useful, as well as those with variable incomes, such as the self employed.