We haven’t run a lender market share story in a while, so no better time than the present.

For share data, we like to call on David McVay of McVay and Associates Ltd. He tracks lender performance for a living and is always kind enough to share his stats with us.

That said, and without further ado, here are the top 10 Canadian mortgage lenders by market share, with some related comments…

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The Big Hitters

Quick takes:

• The Big 5 banks still hold two out of three Canadian mortgages, a number relatively unchanged since our last mortgage market share report 16 months ago.
• 248 bps of Scotiabank’s massive 265 bps market share gain is thanks to its ING Direct acquisition, McVay says.
• HSBC, ING Direct and CIBC all left the broker market, and not coincidentally, they all sit near the bottom in terms of market share performance. CIBC has taken the biggest hit of any bank in the last 12 months, losing 82 bps of share while it tries to replace broker originations with mortgages sold by its own sales force.
• BMO lost 275 bps of share from February 2007 through January 2012, thanks largely to its broker market exit. It has never recovered that loss, despite massively undercutting rivals on advertised rates. That said, being a price leader has started to pay off with BMO recouping 53 bps in the last year. Low rates have also gained it more free advertising than most other banks combined. (How many times did we hear about BMO’s 2.99% rate sales in the past 4 quarters?) That, of course, says little about its margins. Unfortunately, mortgage profitability is a black box at the banks and hard to analyze. But McVay notes, “Losing 34% of volume is a lot of
  revenue (for BMO) to replace.” (Note: We also have no way of knowing how much of BMO’s recent share gain is due to it reportedly funding some of MCAP‘s mortgages.)
• First National’s mortgage book (as seen here) consists of single-family residential mortgages under administration. That includes mortgages owned by other parties, where First National (FNF) is essentially collecting servicing/administration fees.

Broker Market Leaders (Q1 2013)

Quick takes:

• Broker channel volume, as measured by D+H, dropped 12.5% in Q1 Y/Y
• Street Capital has posted massive 12-month growth through the first quarter of 2013. That positioned it just 30 bps behind First National for second place in the broker market. Some of the reasons: On standard mortgages, Street’s product features are second to few, its sales force is exceptional at relationship building and Street pays trailers (which some brokers love because they don’t have to fight lenders for their clients at renewal).
• MCAP has also turned it on in the prior 12 months. Like Street, MCAP picked up brokers stranded by CIBC’s wind-down of FirstLine. On top of that, MCAP’s pricing has been sharp for status brokers.
• Home Trust also racked up significant share gains (200 bps) in Q1. It did that by targeting deals that banks no longer approve due to tighter lending guidelines

* Overall Market Sources: Market share figures are estimates based on data from OSFI, the Bank of Canada, and McVay and Associates Ltd.’s proprietary sources. Data is as of April 2013 (there is a lag in lender reporting). McVay and Associates is a source of market intelligence and market share data in retail banking. Founded by David McVay, a 31 year veteran in financial services, McVay and Associates produces two widely-referenced industry reports: The Banking Personal Market Report and The Credit Union Report.

** Broker Market Source: D+H puts out a terrific, non-public report called Lender Insights, which compiles lender market share data in the mortgage broker industry. We receive data from that report via third party sources and have quoted it here. This data is not confirmed, but is believed reliable. Note: These market share figures do not count MorWeb volumes (D+H’s smaller competitor) but the data does provide a decent proxy of industry-wide market share.

Rob McLister, CMT

Last modified: April 26, 2014