90+Day Delinquency Rate YoY Changes for Non-Mortgage Loans
“As the fourth quarter came to a close, Canada’s credit market remained strong despite the imposition of further lockdown restrictions. While the credit market remained resilient, delinquency rates held steady across most products, and the distribution of risk trended positively, we began to see delinquency roll rates accelerate from the prior quarter.”
- Matthew Fabian, Director, Research and Industry Insights
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)
Strong new loan originations in the auto and mortgage sectors coming out of Q3 2020 drove healthy Canadian credit market activity into the end of 2020. Total credit market balances grew 3.7% representing $68.9B in additional credit outstanding. The increase was overwhelmingly driven by mortgage but offset by declines in cards and LOC.
“We expect to see some increase in delinquency rates through 2021 especially among the most economically vulnerable consumers, but the current signs suggest that Canadians generally will be able to absorb the impact and that deferral and government support programs have been relatively effective at supporting consumers through the pandemic. Delinquency rates, however, are sensitive to economic events like interest rates, unemployment, and income, so the long-term impact will depend significantly on how these progress through 2021”.
- Matthew Fabian, Director, Research and Industry Insights
Government subsidies and payment holidays supporting low delinquency trends
As government relief and lender deferral programs ended, delinquency rates started to increase for credit cards but remained low for other products. Only 2.3% of credit consumers still have a deferral remaining on at least one product versus 8% of consumers when deferrals peaked in June. Despite deferrals coming off of most products, delinquency rates remained suppressed from the prior year across all products except credit cards.