Rate grade
A free first read that turns a homeowner's rate into an understandable grade and dollar-denominated gap.
ProjectBuildingInternal: RateWise Pro
Project profile
Zest
Real-time Australian mortgage intelligence for seeing whether your bank is still giving you a fair rate.
Zest gives homeowners the dashboard their bank has no incentive to provide: a plain-English view of their rate gap, lender alternatives, and negotiation path.
Building
Status
Registry state
Open banking, Consumer Data Right, and mortgage switching pressure
Profile
Macro tailwind
2026-05-22
Updated
Public build log
What it is
A mortgage-rate intelligence product for Australian homeowners. It compares a user's rate against market options, explains the gap, and points toward monitoring, negotiation, and switching workflows.
Open banking, Consumer Data Right, and mortgage switching pressure
Australia's Consumer Data Right is designed to let consumers use their data with trusted third parties. In mortgages, that creates room for tools that make rate comparison, switching, and negotiation more visible.
Core functionality
Market comparison
Tracks lender products and shows how a user's current situation compares with available market rates.
Pro monitoring
Plans around ongoing daily monitoring, personalized insights, negotiation letter flows, and outcome tracking.
Trust and operations
Includes production-oriented work around CI, monitoring, scrape health, billing, and report consistency.
Architecture
Zest is a React/Vite product backed by Supabase data, edge functions, rate-ingestion jobs, billing paths, and dashboard/report surfaces. The source repo name remains RateWise Pro; the public brand is Zest.
Stack
- React, Vite, TypeScript, Tailwind, shadcn/ui, and Recharts
- Supabase auth, Postgres, migrations, and edge functions
- Stripe checkout, customer portal, and webhook paths
- CDR-oriented market-rate ingestion and scrape health monitoring
- Sentry and CI discipline for production readiness
Data flow
- Market-rate ingestion collects and normalizes lender product data.
- User loan/profile data powers personalized comparison and rate-gap calculations.
- Dashboard and report surfaces explain the user's gap and options.
- Billing and Pro controls unlock ongoing monitoring and action workflows.
Safeguards
- Public copy should avoid promising savings or financial outcomes.
- Private operational details, keys, project IDs, and security specifics stay out of the portfolio.
- Financial copy should be framed as product exploration, not financial advice.
Customer and business lens
Wedge
Make the hidden loyalty tax visible first, then convert users into monitoring and negotiation workflows.
Model
A freemium consumer-finance model: free rate grade and teaser report, paid Pro monitoring and action support.
Use cases
- Check whether a current mortgage rate is competitive.
- Compare market alternatives using familiar lender names.
- Generate a negotiation letter or action plan.
- Monitor rate movement over time.
Risks to watch
- Accuracy and freshness are essential to trust.
- Financial guidance boundaries must stay clear.
- CDR and data-handling claims must match actual accreditation and implementation status.
Personas
Existing mortgage holder
Has been with a lender for years and suspects they are no longer on a competitive rate.
Refinance-ready homeowner
Wants evidence and confidence before calling their bank or comparing alternatives.
Rate-sensitive household
Feels cost-of-living pressure and needs a simple view of where meaningful savings might exist.
The loyal borrower
Has stayed with a major bank and needs a simple signal that their loyalty may be costing them.
The spreadsheet homeowner
Already compares rates but wants automation, cleaner visuals, and confidence that the data is fresh.
The reluctant negotiator
Knows they should call the bank but wants language, numbers, and a concrete reason to act.
Progress kanban
Shipped
- Rate comparison and report surfaces
- Dashboard and lender matching work
- Stripe checkout and customer portal paths
- CI, monitoring, and scrape-health foundations
- Brand/report mockups and launch creative assets
In flight
- Dashboard trust sweep and data freshness clarity
- Navigation and report coherence
- Analytics and launch measurement
Backlog
- Feature flags and dark launches
- Paywall enforcement audit
- Rules-based and later AI-generated insight narratives
- Letters history and richer Pro retention loops
Visual evidence
Links and build receipts
Zest previewCurrent hosted product output may require deployment access.Dashboard mockup artifactLocal static mockup copied into this portfolio.Rate report mockup artifactLocal static mockup copied into this portfolio.
Build receipts
- Recent source signals include lender-tier unification, dashboard deep-dive split, Meta Pixel route tracking, promo-code checkout, and report matching work.
- Launch work packages show shipped foundations around paid-tier controls, billing/auth return, security hygiene, CI, monitoring, and dashboard simplification.