Report
Q3 2025 Credit Industry Insights
Canadians Take on More Credit Amid Lower Interest Rates as Mortgage Churn Rises and Economic Disparities Deepen
Q3 2025 Report highlights include:
- Total consumer debt rose to $2.6 trillion, driven by increased mortgage balances amid falling interest rates; mortgage originations jumped 18% YoY as Canadians opted for shorter-term fixed mortgages.
- Delinquency trends reveal widening financial disparity across regions; early-stage delinquencies declined, but late-stage delinquencies rose, with Ontario, Alberta and Quebec showing the sharpest increases.
- Credit card market shows signs of slowdown as originations declined further.
Total balances grew across all products and across all risk tiers. Mortgage balances rose 4.1% year-over-year (YoY) to $1.89 trillion, while total non-mortgage debt increased 4.3% to $673 billion. This growth was driven by the combination of rising average loan sizes as well as the number of borrowers. The number of credit-active consumers grew by 2.7% YoY, while total credit balances increased at a faster pace of 4.1% over the same period. The average non-mortgage balance per consumer reached $27,100 – up 2.6% YoY – marking a shift back to the more moderate pace of growth seen before the pandemic.
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).
“In today’s elevated interest rate environment, consumers are potentially tempted to opt for shorter-term mortgages to optimize for renewal at favorably lower rates. Lenders will need to watch out for shifts in market share and adjust retention strategies in order to maintain a strong customer base as consumers shop around for more affordable rates.”
- 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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