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While offsetting has long been heralded as a way for those with a substantial savings pot to reduce the interest rate on their mortgage, consumers have been struggling to get to grips with the concept for years.

Offset mortgages can be a bit confusing to consumers who are not familiar with the term and if the benefits of these deals are not explained carefully the less than straight forward combination of savings and debt can act as a barrier to the product being taken up.

These days advisers have a myriad of tools and technology to aid them in their jobs. But are offset calculators being used to the best advantage to illustrate the impact such a mortgage can have on borrower's pockets?

Melanie Buckingham, head of sales for The One Account, said despite the fact current account mortgages had been around for more than 10 years there still were a number of misconceptions.

She said: "One is that people think they are complicated. But they are not. True, a current account mortgage combines a mortgage loan with someone's savings and income in the one account. But when the benefits are explained, people soon warm to the idea.

"Another misconception is all your money is lumped together in one mass making it difficult to manage. Not true. Customers are able to create virtual pots in their online account to ringfence money for things like income tax payments, holiday savings or school fees."

Ms Buckingham said the most interesting psychological issue associated with current account mortgages was known as the "ATM experience".

She explained: "This is the experience of withdrawing cash and seeing that your overall balance could be hundreds of thousands of pounds overdrawn. But, from our experience, we have found that this motivates customers to try and reduce the outstanding debt as quickly as possible and to be a little more frugal each time they visit the hole-in-the-wall."

Ross Corry, media relations officer for Intelligent Finance, said while offset mortgages were an interesting concept the thing that let these deals down was the lack of education among consumers about such deals.

He said: "There is a misconception that offset mortgages are only suitable for those with large amounts of savings and this is not the case. Research shows households with savings just worth 8 per cent of the mortgage balance could be better off with an offset mortgage, which goes some way to dispel the myth that you need substantial savings to benefit."

David Finlay, intermediary business director for Woolwich, said consumers and advisers were slowly coming around to the benefits offered by offset but there were still barriers to overcome if take-up was to increase.

Ronan Marrion, a mortgage adviser for Truro-based IFA Worldwide Financial Planning, said he personally did not feel clients had a mental barrier towards offsetting but added it was the job of a good adviser to make sure the concept had been properly explained.

He said: "When conducting your fact find with the client if you explain the mechanics and features of the products using their own individual circumstances they will more than understand what is on offer."

Intelligent Finance's Mr Corry believes the calculators could play a "vitally important" role when it came to explaining the benefits of offset mortgages to consumers.

He said: "Offsets are sometimes considered as a complex and perhaps niche product and these tools go a long way to demonstrate the true benefits of the offset proposition.

"A calculator allows an adviser to give complete line of sight on how savings impact the standard variable rate, the interest charged and term saved. It can also display the effective interest rate that is calculated by taking the mortgage balance, deducting the amount held in the customer's current account, their Isa or savings."

The One Account's Ms Buckingham said online offset calculators have proved to be "very influential" when helping consumers to understand the effect a current account mortgage will have on their finances.

She said: "People can find out the amount they can save each month in interest repayments; the number of years and months they can reduce their mortgage term by and the total amount of money they can save over the term of their mortgage."

The Woolwich's Mr Finlay said: "Technological tools are helping to move the offset market forward. The addition of the effective rate calculator on the Trigold platform has helped to further boost offsets profile, with advisers able to clearly illustrate to clients the potential savings that offset could provide them.

"There is still plenty of further scope for the future development of offset, such as potentially linking offset to commercial property, or to credit card facilities for instance. However, the most important thing is to continue to educate advisers and consumers about the core product and how good it is. If we try to sprint before we are jogging, we might just fall over."

Mr Marrion said while an offset calculator could be helpful in explaining the concept of offset, it was really down to the adviser's skill to make sure the product was understood properly.

He said: "When it comes to educating a client about the benefits of offset mortgages I entirely believe this in the role of a mortgage adviser. While calculators and gimmicky offset tools are useful to demonstrate certain points, it is down to a good mortgage adviser to point out the advantages to be had from making use of these products properly.

"Clients will always look to a good adviser for their thoughts and direction so if the advisers do not have total confidence in what they are talking about a new offset calculator will not help. This is not to say they are not useful and the ones which are around at the moment definitely help to illustrate key points but I feel these are satisfactory and it would be hard to see how they could be improved upon."