Reverse mortgage blog

CHIP Reverse Mortgage: An Independent Broker Review (2026)

Richard Hopkins · Licensed Mortgage Broker M16000896

5.0

(240+ Google Reviews)

Updated July 26, 2026

General information for Canadian homeowners, not personal financial, legal, or tax advice. Rates and lender details verified as of July 21, 2026.

The CHIP Reverse Mortgage is Canada’s original and largest reverse mortgage — established 1986, often lending the most — but it is really four products, and the advertised rate is a new-client special, not the rate existing clients reset to.

Searching for a CHIP review before signing is exactly the right instinct — and it is surprisingly hard to do well. Most of what ranks is HomeEquity Bank’s own material, and most of the rest is thin summaries that never mention a number. This review lays out the full picture: what CHIP actually is, how its four products differ, today’s real rates and fees — including the posted-rate schedule most reviews never mention — what to watch out for, and who CHIP genuinely fits.

What is the CHIP Reverse Mortgage?

CHIP is the reverse mortgage offered by HomeEquity Bank, a federally regulated Canadian bank acquired by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan in 2022. The name goes back to 1986, when the product launched as the Canadian Home Income Plan — making it Canada’s first reverse mortgage by more than three decades. Today HomeEquity Bank holds roughly 75% of all reverse mortgage balances in the country, and decades of television advertising have made CHIP the name most homeowners reach for when they mean a reverse mortgage of any kind. The full market picture — lender shares, growth, and how Canada compares abroad — lives in the reverse mortgage statistics for Canada hub.

The fundamentals work like every Canadian reverse mortgage. Homeowners 55 and older borrow against the home without selling it (for a couple, both spouses need to be at least 55). There are no required monthly mortgage payments — interest is added to the balance instead — and the loan is repaid when the home is sold, when the last borrower permanently moves out, or after the last borrower passes away. The money is a loan rather than income, so it is tax-free and does not affect Old Age Security or the Guaranteed Income Supplement. Property taxes, home insurance, and reasonable upkeep remain the homeowner’s responsibility, the same as with any mortgage — and the No Negative Equity Guarantee means neither you nor your estate ever repays more than the home’s fair market value at the time the mortgage becomes due, as long as those obligations are met.

Two practical things set CHIP apart from the other three lenders. The first is reach: HomeEquity Bank lends across Canada, including in smaller and more rural markets where the newer lenders are choosier, and the home only needs a $250,000 appraised value to qualify for the flagship product. The second is depth: after nearly forty years, CHIP has the longest track record in the country on the things that only show up years into a mortgage — renewals, estate settlements, and hardship situations. Track record does not make a product cheap, but it does make it predictable, and predictability is worth something on a loan designed to run for the rest of your life.

How do the four CHIP products work?

“CHIP” gets used as if it were one product, and it is not — HomeEquity Bank sells four, each built for a different situation. This is the part most reviews skip entirely, and it is the first place a homeowner can pick wrong.

The flagship CHIP Reverse Mortgage is what most people mean by the name: a lump-sum advance of up to 55% of the home’s appraised value, most often used to clear an existing mortgage and free up the monthly mortgage payment, with the remainder available for whatever the plan calls for. Money can be set aside for future draws — but that comes with a caution covered below.

Income Advantage flips the delivery. Instead of one large advance, it pays a steady stream of smaller ones (monthly, or at a schedule you choose), which suits a retiree whose real problem is a gap between income and expenses rather than one big bill. Interest only accrues on what has actually been advanced, which makes it the slowest-compounding way to use a reverse mortgage, and a common fit for ongoing costs like in-home care. Its set-up fee is higher, at $2,495, and the scheduled-advance portion runs on a variable rate.

CHIP Max exists for one purpose: more money. It lends above the flagship’s ceiling (reaching the market’s top tier, which Equitable Bank’s Flex Plus and Home Trust’s Boost tier also reach for older borrowers) and it charges a meaningfully higher interest rate for it, on the entire balance, not just the extra dollars. It is available in select locations and is subject to the bank’s credit criteria. For a homeowner weighing it against a second mortgage or an alternative lender, that trade can genuinely make sense. For anyone else, it deserves a hard look at whether the extra amount justifies repricing every borrowed dollar — the age-by-age breakdown of how much you can actually get shows how far the standard ceilings already go.

CHIP Open is the one no other Canadian lender offers: a reverse mortgage that can be repaid in full at any time with no prepayment charge. The freedom is real, and so is its price — a variable rate several points above the flagship product and a closing cost of the greater of $2,995 or 1.25% of the loan amount, per HomeEquity Bank’s posted terms. Partial payments are not allowed — it is built to be repaid all at once. For a genuine bridge — a downsize where the current home will sell within months — it can beat private lending on both cost and stress. If the plan changes, a $500 conversion fee moves it into the regular CHIP product. What it is not is a cheaper way to keep options open indefinitely: held for years, its higher rate costs far more than the flexibility is worth.

One caution applies across every version, and it comes straight from HomeEquity Bank’s own materials: subsequent advances are not guaranteed. Money approved but not yet advanced can be reduced or paused later — if home values fall, for instance, or the balance has grown large. A plan that assumes “the rest will be there when we need it” is quietly carrying that risk, which is why how the money is structured on day one (lump sum now versus draws later) deserves more thought than it usually gets.

What are CHIP’s rates and fees right now?

Here is where CHIP sits as of July 2026, from HomeEquity Bank’s own published tables. The left column is what a new client is advertised. The right column is the posted schedule — and the difference between the two is the single most useful thing this review has to show you.

On cost of entry, CHIP’s closing and administrative fee is $1,795 — the highest advertised set-up number among the four lenders, and also the most complete. It includes the lender’s closing legal work, so a CHIP client hires only one lawyer: their own, for the required independent legal advice, typically $800 to $1,200 in Ontario. The lenders advertising $995 charge for setup only, leaving the client to pay a second, separate closing-lawyer bill — so on a real closing statement the four lenders’ all-in costs land far closer together than the stickers suggest. Add an appraisal, usually a few hundred dollars, and nearly all of it can be paid from the mortgage proceeds rather than out of pocket.

Rate-wise, CHIP’s advertised 6.39% special sits at the top of the four lenders’ base range — the others post between 6.23% and 6.33% as of the same date, a spread worked through in the full rates explainer. A fraction of a point matters less than most shoppers assume, and less than the two structural points that follow.

Why the advertised rate isn’t the whole story

The first structural point is in the table above, and HomeEquity Bank publishes it in plain sight: the advertised rates are new-client specials — its own rate page describes them as adjustments off posted rates, available in certain locations for new clients. The posted schedule is what an existing client’s mortgage resets to when a term ends. Today that gap is 0.6 percentage points on the 5-year fixed. On a $200,000 balance, six-tenths of a point is roughly $1,200 a year in extra interest, compounding.

That gap matters because of how reverse mortgage terms actually work. A term here is not like a traditional mortgage term, where maturity is a moment you can walk away, and choosing a term is really choosing how long a price is locked. A reverse mortgage is a for-life product: at the end of the 1, 3, or 5-year term, the balance rolls into a new term at whatever the posted schedule says that day — and the bank’s own fine print adds that reset pricing can include rate premiums specific to your file. The early-repayment schedule, meanwhile, runs from the original funding date, so a term ending is not a penalty-free exit window. The practical reading: the rate that gets a borrower in the door is the best rate that mortgage may ever see, and the reset five years later is where the real lifetime cost gets set.

The second structural point is that the sharpest reverse mortgage pricing in this market is frequently not published at all. Lenders run unadvertised rate specials through the broker channel — pricing a homeowner phoning a call centre, or reading a lender’s own calculator, will simply never see. The same is true of fees: on a file lenders want to compete for, set-up fees have room in them. None of that appears on a rate page, which is precisely why treating the posted number as the final word is the most expensive habit in reverse mortgage shopping — and why the useful move is a comparison run across every lender’s real pricing for your specific age and home, not a phone-around of advertised stickers.

What does a CHIP Reverse Mortgage cost over time?

The long-term math applies to CHIP exactly as it does to every reverse mortgage: interest compounds semi-annually on a growing balance, and no payments are required, so the balance rises over the years. What that means for the estate is less dramatic than most people fear — because the home’s value is usually rising over the same years, appreciation offsets some or all of the interest, and Canadian reverse mortgage borrowers have historically kept around half their equity even after many years. Whether your own numbers look comfortable or tight depends on the amount, the rate, and the home — which is exactly what this models:

This calculator is for illustration only — enter a home value, the youngest borrower’s age, and the amount you have in mind, and it projects the balance against the home’s value over time. Your real numbers depend on your lender, rate, and property, which is what a free estimate works out.

Two levers keep the long-term cost in check. Optional payments are allowed — CHIP permits regular interest payments, and like most lenders it allows a partial prepayment each year within its limits, so a borrower who wants to slow or freeze the compounding can. And the draw structure matters as much as the rate: money not yet advanced is money not yet accruing interest, which is Income Advantage’s whole reason to exist.

What should you watch out for?

A fair review of a forty-year-old product is mostly a list of ways to use it wrong — CHIP’s genuine weak points are specific, and all of them are manageable if they are on the table before signing.

The standard products are closed, and leaving early has a price. CHIP’s early-repayment charge works the way most of the market does. It is a percentage of the amount paid back, highest in the first years, and it steps down as the mortgage gets older — then turns into a smaller charge based on three months’ worth of interest, and after enough years it goes away for good. The dollar cost depends on when the mortgage is paid off and how big the balance is at that point. And because each lender sets up its own schedule, the charge on the very same early exit can differ by thousands from one lender to the next. It is waived on death, reduced after a move into long-term care, and every year a borrower can pay down part of the balance with no penalty at all. But if selling within a few years is a live possibility, that belongs in the product choice from day one — CHIP Open exists for exactly that file, an early exit on the wrong product is where reverse mortgages sting, and which lender’s exit terms best fit a shaky timeline is precisely the comparison a broker runs.

The reset is where the lifetime cost is decided. As covered above: the advertised special applies once, the posted schedule applies at every reset, and today those tables sit 0.6 points apart. A borrower who takes the special and never thinks about the mortgage again hands the bank the pricing pen for decades. The management is simple — know the reset date, and have the market re-checked as it approaches — but someone has to actually do it.

Future advances are not a guarantee. HomeEquity Bank says so itself. A retirement plan built on drawing more later — rather than securing what the plan needs up front — carries a quiet dependency on future home values and lender approval. Structure the draws to match the plan, not the hope.

The 55% headline is a ceiling, not a quote. Age drives the real number: a borrower in their late fifties qualifies for far less than the ceiling, and the percentages climb with every year of age. And the top-tier numbers above 55% belong to CHIP Max, at its higher rate, in its select locations — not to the flagship product the television ads are selling.

Both spouses go on the mortgage. CHIP is built so that both spouses are borrowers (both must be at least 55), and both are protected for life — the design working as intended: the survivor stays, nothing changes, and no payments begin. When the last borrower eventually passes, the estate settles on a familiar track. The flip side is that the amount is priced off the younger spouse’s age, which lowers what a couple with a large age gap can borrow. How a couple is structured on a reverse mortgage — and what it does to the maximum — is one of the questions where lenders genuinely differ, and one worth settling with a broker, at no cost, before an application ever goes in.

One thing that does not belong on this list is the headline that made the rounds in late 2025. A Toronto Star investigation reported an Ontario homeowner’s paid-off home carrying a CHIP mortgage of more than $400,000 that she says she never signed — an alleged identity and title fraud involving a third-party broker, now before the courts. That is a crime story, not a product flaw: the full context sits in the reverse mortgage horror stories breakdown, and its practical lesson is about who handles your file — a licensed, verifiable professional — not about whether the product is sound.

Who is CHIP right for — and who should skip it?

It is worth a serious look for:

• Homeowners who need the maximum dollars. Between the flagship’s ceiling, CHIP Max above it, and four decades of experience approving homes the newer lenders hesitate on, HomeEquity Bank frequently produces the largest approval on a given home — often the deciding factor when the goal is clearing a mortgage and still funding the plan.
• Rural and small-market homes. CHIP’s footprint is the widest in the market. Files the newer lenders decline on location are often ordinary business here.
• Retirees who want income rather than a lump sum. Income Advantage’s scheduled advances (with interest accruing only on what has been drawn) are the right shape for a monthly income gap, and the slowest-compounding way to use home equity.
• A short, certain bridge. For a downsize or sale measured in months, CHIP Open’s repay-any-time design is unique in Canada and can beat private bridge lending decisively.
• Anyone who values track record. Renewals, estates, hardship — CHIP has decades of precedent on each. The newer lenders are still writing theirs.

It is probably the wrong first choice for:

• Rate-first shoppers. CHIP’s advertised base rate sits at the top of the four-lender range, and its reset schedule runs higher still. A borrower whose plan is simply “lowest posted number” will land elsewhere — though posted numbers are, as covered, not where this decision should be made.
• A couple with a large age gap who need the maximum. Pricing off the younger spouse’s age protects both for life, but it caps the amount. Depending on the goal, another lender’s structure — or a different product entirely — may fit the file better.
• Anyone planning to sell in two or three years on a standard closed term. That file belongs in CHIP Open or in a different tool altogether — sometimes a home equity line of credit genuinely wins — not in a closed reverse mortgage with an early-exit charge.
• Borrowers set on managing everything through a branch. There are no CHIP branches — service is by phone and through the professional handling the file. And homeowners going direct see only CHIP, never the other three lenders, one of which is broker-only.

The bottom line: CHIP earns its place as the default name in Canadian reverse mortgages — the biggest amounts, the widest reach, the deepest track record, and product variety no other lender matches. What it is not is automatically the right answer: its advertised rate is the highest of the four base products, its reset schedule deserves managing, and the product variants punish a casual choice. The famous name is where the comparison starts, not where it ends — CHIP rewards being quoted against the other three and chosen on the numbers, never defaulted to on the strength of the name alone.

Free Guide:The Canadian Reverse Mortgage Guide

• ✓How much tax-free cash you could unlock — and what moves the number
• ✓The real costs, rates, and fees — nothing buried in fine print
• ✓How the lenders (CHIP, Equitable Bank, Home Trust, Bloom) really compare
• ✓When a reverse mortgage is the wrong choice

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Written by Richard Hopkins, a licensed Ontario broker — based on real lender commitments, not marketing

Trusted by 1,200+ Ontario homeowners

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How do you actually get the CHIP Reverse Mortgage?

There are two roads. Homeowners can apply to HomeEquity Bank directly — by phone or through its website — or through a licensed mortgage broker, at no cost to the homeowner, since the lender pays the broker. Either way the process is the same: an application, an appraisal to confirm the home’s value, underwriting, and a private meeting with your own lawyer for independent legal advice before anything closes. The set-up costs come off the initial advance, so there is rarely much to pay out of pocket.

The difference between the two roads is what gets compared. Going direct means seeing exactly one lender’s pricing — and not necessarily its sharpest, since the strongest specials move quietly through the broker channel. Going through a broker means CHIP’s real quote lands beside Equitable Bank’s, Bloom’s, and Home Trust’s — including the broker-only lender no direct shopper can access — priced for your actual age, home, and plan, the way the complete Ontario guide walks through. Since the product runs for life and the costs compound, the comparison is not a formality — it is the decision:

Where does CHIP sit in Canada’s reverse mortgage market?

For most of its life, CHIP effectively was the Canadian reverse mortgage market — one product, one lender, no comparison to run. That era is over: Equitable Bank arrived in 2018, Bloom in 2021, and Home Trust in late 2025, and within months of the newest entry all four lenders had cut rates within weeks of each other. Competition is doing what it does — the advertised specials, the fee flexibility, and the product innovation of the past two years all trace back to it. The market’s full sourced numbers live in the reverse mortgage statistics for Canada hub, re-verified every quarter. For the borrower, the moral of the market data is simple: the lender that built the category is no longer the only option, which makes it worth confirming — rather than assuming — that the famous name is the right fit for your file.

Frequently asked questions

About the author

Richard Hopkins

Licensed Mortgage Broker · M16000896

Richard has worked in the mortgage business since 2013 — first as a mortgage agent, today a licensed mortgage broker — and leads the reverse mortgage practice at Homestead Financial — Dominion Lending Centres, an FSRA-licensed Ontario brokerage (#11711) with roots in the industry since 1999 and more than 2,500 mortgages funded. More about Richard →

This article is general information for Canadian homeowners, not personal financial, legal, or tax advice. Everyone's situation is different — please get advice on your own numbers before making a decision. Rates and lender details verified as of July 21, 2026.