Monthly mortgage repayments have declined for close to 100,000 borrowers on fixed-rate deals who have switched to the standard variable rate (SVR) of their lenders, a study shows.

An estimated 100,000 people are benefiting every month from the move to SVRs which are much lower than what they had been paying, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).

Homeowners moving on to standard variable rate at the end of their fixed-rate deal are being charged around 3.9% by lenders, with figures for major players such as Nationwide and Lloyds TSB, including Cheltenham & Gloucester, as low as 2.5%.

On a fixed-rate mortgage taken out two years ago, borrowers would have been paying an average rate of 5.7%, while on a five-year deal they are likely to have been paying around 5.3%, CML said.

Its figures show that someone with a typical £150,000 mortgage on a two-year fixed-rate deal would save around £158 a month, or nearly £1,900 a year from the drop in rate.

Even bigger savings could be made if these people remortgaged on to one of the current best buy deals, such as HSBC's 1.99% discount mortgage, which would reduce their repayments by £317 a month.

But other borrowers coming to the end of existing mortgage deals are facing a steep hike in their monthly repayments.

Mortgage broker John Charcol estimates that between the beginning of September and the end of this year around 100,000 people will come off tracker mortgages under which they have been paying interest of just 0.01% for several months.

Many of these borrowers took out Halifax's two-year tracker at a rate of 0.51% below the base rate, while others were on Cheltenham & Gloucester's tracker offering 1.01% below the base rate.

These borrowers have been paying a nominal rate of just 0.01% since the base rate fell to a record low of 0.5%, with the sum refunded to customers on a monthly basis.

But those who took out the Halifax deal are due to revert to an SVR of 3.5% when their tracker ends, while the 1,500 customers on the C&G deal one will pay interest of 2.5% when their deal expires.

However, the majority of people who took out one of these loans are expected to be able to manage the hike in repayments they will face.

Ray Boulger, senior technical manager at John Charcol, said: "For most people it shouldn't be a problem.

"The rate they revert to is going to be lower than the rate they started paying in the first place."

He added that for people who were on repayment mortgages the increase would be less dramatic as a proportion of their overall costs.

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