Third line forcing may be alive and well in banking, with GE Capital and Aussie Home Loans and party to a deal. A condition of the contract that Aussie has with GE to buy the Wizard Home Loans business is that GE will waive break fees, but only if the Wizard customer refinances through Aussie Home Loans.GE said the preference for refinancing through Aussie was a condition of the sale agreement with Aussie. Aussie confirmed the condition.Wizard and GE customers now have every reason to want to switch lender.GE will not reduce interest rates charged to customers to reflect the cut of 100 basis points in the cash rate earlier this month. GE confirmed this decision yesterday. GE already lagged the market in cutting home loan rates.Most customers of banks have already received a cut this month of at least 90 basis points and many received a cut of 100.A Wizard customer is free to place the business with any lender (using Aussie as a broker), but Aussie must handle the placement and thus earn the lender's commission.If a Wizard customer wants to refinance using the services of another broker and avoid the break fee they will need to be assertive enough to ask for this. Lisa Davis, managing director of GE Money Home Lending, said GE will consider each case.Home loan customers with GE who sourced their loan through a mortgage broker will also receive an offer to waive the break fee, this time without restrictions. They may refinance with whomever they wish. This group of customers has three months to take advantage of the offer.The waiver of the break fee under either offer is available from March 1. Direct customers of GE, for instance through the firm's GE Money shops in the suburbs, do not yet qualify for a similar offer, though GE is thinking about its options.John Symond, executive chair of Aussie, rejected this newsletter's suggestion the arrangement was third line forcing, and said that the business looked into that aspect and also consulted with the ACCC.GE is also understood to have canvassed its pricing plans, at least with respect to interest rates, with ASIC over the last couple of weeks.This steering of Wizard customers toward Aussie by GE was, Symond said, something Aussie paid for. Symond said a wholesale transfer of mortgage insurance from Genworth to the new financier sourced through Aussie is also part of the deal. Thus existing mortgage insurance will carry to the customer's choice of new lender. Borrowers normally have to pick up the fee for the lender's mortgage insurance policy each time they refinance.Commonwealth Bank, which owns a one-third stake in Aussie and bought a pool of GE mortgages as part of the deal, presumably is aware of this aspect of the agreement. CBA did not respond to a request for comment yesterday.John Symond said Aussie's goal in buying Wizard was "to make sure the majority of GE and Wizard customers end up with a better home loan, with a