Have you ever wondered who holds all the Canadian mortgages? Out of all those lenders, which ones actually have most of the market share? It’s a good thing to know, especially if you’re going to be getting a mortgage or renewing your mortgage any time soon. And it also helps explain sometimes why lenders do what they do (or just leaves more questions following their actions.) So, which lender holds the most mortgages in Canada? Canadian Mortgage Trends outlined the top ten for us, and just how much value in mortgages they hold:
- RBC – $186.3 billion (17.08% of the market share)
- TD Bank – $157 billion (14.4% of the market share)
- CIBC – $148.7 billion (13.64% of the market share)
- Scotiabank – $145.7 billion (13.36% of the market share)
- Desjardins – $81.3 billion (7.46% of the market share)
- BMO – $71.2 billion (6.53% of the market share)
- First National – $40.8 billion (3.74% of the market share)
- ING Direct – $30.2 billion (2.77% of the market share)
- National Bank – $29.3 billion (2.69% of the market share)
- HSBC – $19.7 billion (1.81% of the market share)
So what does this mean for consumers exactly? Well, it is interesting to see that the Big 5 hold over 65% of the mortgages in Canada – that’s five lenders with most of our mortgages. And, even though the chart doesn’t show it, TD has actually seen the most growth over the past year, moving up 87 basis points (RBC comes in second with not even half of that at only 32 basis points.) That growth for TD is interesting because it comes at about the same time TD started to offer collateral mortgages only on all of their mortgages – something that many consumers believe is “handcuffing” them to a deal for the next several years, making it nearly impossible to switch lenders throughout the life of the loan.
Another, maybe not so surprising, finding from this is that from BMO. Bank of Montreal is grouped into Canada’s Big 5 of major lenders, yet it falls to #6 on this list. Why is that? Because they’ve left the broker channel, no longer allowing customers to take advantage of their products through a mortgage broker. Seeing as how CIBC (#3 on the list) just recently made this move, along with rumours that they’re going to be selling FirstLine, it will be interesting to see how that bank does in the next coming months. However, BMO may have a plan in place to get back up into the Top 5 as they are now trying to build their shares of HELOCs – often used by customers as a 2nd mortgage, but still part of the mortgage market nonetheless.
The data does provide some interesting information, indeed. And now when it’s time for you to get a mortgage, or renew your existing one, it definitely provides some background info that could play a large part in your ultimate decision as to who gets to hold your mortgage.
