Report
Q3 2024 Credit Industry Insights
Canadian Credit Market Set to Grow in 2025 Amid Expected Lower Cost of Living and Interest Rates
Q3 2024 Report highlights include:
- Number of Canadians with access to credit and total outstanding consumer balances reached new records in the third quarter of 2024, mainly driven by Millennial and Gen Z consumers
- With an expectation of subsided inflation and lower interest rates, 2025 forecast projects growth in credit activity and improved performance
More Canadians borrowed and used credit in the third quarter of 2024, as interest rates and inflation continued to decline, pushing the total consumer credit debt to a record $2.5 trillion, a 4.1% year-over-year (YoY) increase, according to TransUnion’s Q3 2024 Credit Industry Insights Report (CIIR). The number of Canadians with at least one credit product rose to 32.2 million, a 3.1% increase YoY, and the number of Canadians with an outstanding balance also rose to 29.7 million, a 2.8% increase YoY.
Approximately 45% of the total household debt in Canada is held by Millennial and Gen Z consumers, who hold $1.1 trillion in outstanding balances. As more Gen Z consumers have entered the credit market, they have taken on more types of debt, making them the fastest growing segment of Canadians carrying an outstanding balance.
90+ Day Delinquency Rate YoY Changes for All Product Loans*
*Measured in basis points.
Average Consumer Balance, by Product*
*Represents the average balance held by a consumer across each type of product (consumers can have multiple instances of same product).
“Though pockets of stress may linger, the continued improvement of macroeconomic conditions, such as inflation and interest rates, is expected to ease pressure on consumer wallets. Consumers have been resilient, and we expect to see growth from an increase in originations and average balances, and a positive impact on delinquencies. Lenders should leverage enhanced consumer-level data and attributes to predict these pockets of growth and address consumer needs to drive consumer trust and loyalty.”
- Matthew Fabian, director of financial services research and consulting at TransUnion Canada
About the TransUnion CIIR Report
TransUnion Canada’s quarterly Credit Industry Insights Report provides in-depth, statistical information drawn from its national consumer credit database (of more than 30 million files profiling nearly every credit-active consumer in Canada). It summarizes data and trends for the national population overall, as well as breakdowns within consumer credit score risk tiers, and provides insights on the Canadian consumer lending industry. By leveraging the Industry Insights Report, institutions across industries can analyze market dynamics throughout an entire business cycle, helping understand consumer behaviour over time. It provides account-level and consumer-level views of key metrics and trends — over the nine most recent quarters — and considers major consumer lending categories: credit cards, personal loans, auto loans, home loans, and lines of credit while also looking at aggregate views of all revolving lines of credit and non-revolving loans.
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