Reverse mortgage blog
Reverse Mortgage Reviews in Canada: All Four Lenders (2026)
General information for Canadian homeowners, not personal financial, legal, or tax advice.
Key takeaways
- Canada has four reverse mortgage lenders — HomeEquity Bank (CHIP), Equitable Bank, Bloom, and Home Trust — and all four are government regulated (Financial Consumer Agency of Canada).
- Most reverse mortgage reviews online cover one company at a time. A page of customer comments about a lender's service says nothing about whether a different lender would lend more on your home (all four compared).
- At the core the four products work the same way: no required monthly mortgage payments, and a No Negative Equity Guarantee on every one of them (how a reverse mortgage works).
- What actually differs is pricing, early-repayment terms, product variants, and how much each lender will lend — which is why the same two homeowners can get four different offers (how the pricing is set).
- Canada had one reverse mortgage lender until 2018 and four since Home Trust launched EquityAccess in October 2025 — so a review written before then is missing a quarter of the market.
Reverse mortgage reviews in Canada come down to four lenders — HomeEquity Bank’s CHIP, Equitable Bank, Bloom, and Home Trust — and the useful ones say who each lender fits and who it doesn’t, rather than scoring the company.
Anyone thinking about a reverse mortgage wants to know whether the lender behind it can be trusted. The challenge is not that the information is hidden. It is that almost everything called a review in Canada covers one company at a time, so a homeowner can read three pages and still not know which of the four is right for them.
What matters to a homeowner is simpler than a company’s service record: whether a lender will advance enough to do what needs doing, what it will cost over the years, and what happens to the home and the family when it is eventually sold.
This page reviews all four Canadian reverse mortgage lenders — what each one is known for, who it fits, who it doesn’t, and how to judge any reverse mortgage review found online.
What do reverse mortgage reviews in Canada actually tell you?
Less than most people expect, because they aren’t all reviewing the same thing.
Three different pages get called a review. A lender’s own page of customer comments covers one company. So does a rating site collecting comments about that company.
A general opinion piece about whether reverse mortgages are a good idea at all isn’t a review of a lender either. Neither is a cautionary story about one household, though those are worth reading, in Canadian reverse mortgage horror stories.
None of them answers what a homeowner is actually asking: whether this particular mortgage suits them. All four lenders come with the same core protections, described below, so how a company answers the phone tells you little about whether its mortgage will still suit the household in ten years.
The four Canadian reverse mortgage lenders, reviewed
What each lender is known for, who it tends to suit, and a link to its full review.
HomeEquity Bank (CHIP) — the one everybody has heard of
CHIP has been lending since 1986 and is still the largest by a wide margin. Its real advantages are size and reach. It often lends the most on a given home. It approves homes in small towns and rural areas the newer lenders turn down. And it has handled decades of renewals and estates while the other three are still writing their first.
The catch doesn’t appear in the television advertising. Its starting rate usually sits at the top of the four, and the advertised figure is a new-client special — not the rate an existing client resets to when a term ends. Across twenty years, that reset schedule costs more than the opening rate ever will.
CHIP is often the right answer. It is almost never the right default. Read the full CHIP review.
Equitable Bank — for people who read the contract
Equitable competes on the things that quietly decide what a reverse mortgage costs. Its starting rate is consistently among the lowest of the four, and its early-repayment terms are among the mildest published anywhere in the market.
Its best feature is one almost nobody shops on. Equitable prints the rate its existing clients reset to right beside the rate it offers new ones — and today those are the same number. Not every lender’s are.
That is not a promise about 2031. No five-year term can make one. What it shows is how a lender treats the customers it already has, which is the closest thing to a preview anyone gets before signing. Read the full Equitable Bank review.
Bloom — the only rate you can fix for life
Bloom’s standard product works much like the other three, with one addition: a prepaid Mastercard tied to the mortgage, for small monthly draws with interest charged only on what is actually spent.
What sets Bloom apart is SafeRate — the only reverse mortgage in Canada whose rate can be fixed for life, with no reset, ever. It is also the only portable one: a borrower who sells and buys again carries the same mortgage, at the same locked rate, to the new home.
SafeRate is the one product where the balance twenty years out can be worked out on the day it is signed. For a homeowner whose real worry is what will be left for the family, that is the whole question answered on day one. It also tends to lend more than the other lenders’ standard products to borrowers in their late fifties, where the usual ceilings are tightest.
The card and the lifetime rate sit on different products, so a borrower takes one or the other. And Bloom stops short of the market’s top lending tier — at 70 or older needing every available dollar, the answer is elsewhere. Read the full Bloom review.
Home Trust (EquityAccess) — the newest, and the quietest
Home Trust launched EquityAccess in October 2025, opened with pricing among the sharpest in the market, and advertises the market’s highest lending limit for borrowers 70 and older.
Two things are worth knowing. Its first renewals are still a couple of years away, so nobody has seen yet how it behaves at a reset — a fact about its age, not a mark against it. And it is available only through mortgage brokers, which means a homeowner phoning lenders one at a time will never be shown it at all. Read the full Home Trust EquityAccess review.
All four side by side. The four-lender comparison — rates, advertised fees, lending ceilings, and how the early-repayment charges differ in kind — has its own page: reverse mortgage companies in Canada compared.
Every one of those verdicts is a starting point, not an answer. The four have to be quoted on the same home, on the same day, before any of it means anything.
What do the reviews of all four lenders agree on?
One thing, and it surprises people: the mortgages themselves are close to identical.
What is the same at every lender?
All four are government regulated and lend against home equity with no required monthly mortgage payments. The interest is added to the balance instead, and the mortgage is repaid when the home is sold, the owner moves out permanently, or the last borrower passes away (how a reverse mortgage works, and what that looks like in Ontario).
Every one of the four carries the No Negative Equity Guarantee, so the homeowner or their estate can never owe more than the home’s fair market value at the time the mortgage becomes due — as long as the basic obligations are met: property taxes paid, insurance in place, the home kept in reasonable repair and lived in as the main home. And every one requires advice from the homeowner’s own lawyer before anything becomes final.
What is different from one lender to the next?
Three things, and together they decide what a reverse mortgage really costs.
- How much money you can get. Ask all four lenders about the same house on the same day, and they will not all offer you the same amount. The difference between the highest and the lowest can be tens of thousands of dollars.
- What it costs to end it early. Some lenders charge you a percentage of what you still owe. Others charge a few months of interest. Those are two different kinds of charge, not simply a bigger one and a smaller one, and the difference can run to thousands of dollars.
- The rate a few years from now. Your rate is set for a term of a few years, and then it changes. What it changes to matters more, over the whole life of the mortgage, than the rate you start with (how the pricing works).
So the four aren’t interchangeable, which is why no review can settle the choice in advance.
How do you judge a reverse mortgage review you find online?
Five checks, and they take about a minute.
- Whose website is it on? A page of customer comments hosted by the lender being reviewed covers that lender only.
- Does it cover more than one lender? Canada has four. A review of one can’t tell you whether another would lend more on your home.
- Does it say who the product is wrong for? A review that never names anyone it doesn’t suit has left out the most useful part.
- Is it dated, and are the numbers current? Rates move through the year, and Canada gained its fourth lender in October 2025 — anything written before then is missing a lender.
- Does it say what it doesn’t cover? A review that admits its limits beats one implying it has settled everything.
A review that passes all five is worth the time. It still won’t tell you what any of the four would offer on your home, because that’s a quote, not an article.
See what all four lenders would offer on your home
A free, no-obligation estimate compares every reverse mortgage lender in Canada for your exact age and home — with no impact on your credit.
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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
Simply enter your info below and a PDF copy will instantly be sent right to your inbox.
Should you get a reverse mortgage at all — and if so, which lender?
Those five checks narrow down what to trust. None of them answers the question sitting underneath.
The first question isn’t which lender. It’s whether a reverse mortgage is the right way to pay for this at all, or whether savings, a traditional mortgage, or a home equity line of credit would cost less. An independent broker arranges all of those, so “a different product fits you better” is an ordinary outcome here.
Only then does the lender question matter, and answering it means having all four quote the same home — what each will lend, what each charges to leave early, and which one is most flexible on the parts that matter to this household.
That comparison costs the homeowner nothing, because the lender pays the broker after closing. How to pick the broker who runs it — the licence check and the questions that test any of them — is covered in choosing a reverse mortgage broker in Canada, and a free estimate is where the four-lender comparison starts.
Frequently asked questions
Which is the best reverse mortgage company in Canada?
There is no single best one. Canada has four reverse mortgage lenders — HomeEquity Bank (CHIP), Equitable Bank, Bloom, and Home Trust — and which one wins changes with your age, your home's value and location, and how long you expect to keep the mortgage. HomeEquity Bank often lends the most. Equitable Bank tends to have the sharpest starting rate and borrower-friendly early-repayment terms. Bloom offers the only rate that can be fixed for life and the only portable product. Home Trust is the newest, priced sharply, and available only through mortgage brokers. A broker compares all four for your actual age and home, at no cost to you.
Are reverse mortgage reviews reliable?
It depends on what the review is measuring. A page of customer comments measures how a company answered the phone, which tells you little about what the mortgage will cost or how much it will lend. A product review is more useful, but only if it covers all four Canadian lenders, says who each one is wrong for, and carries a date. Rates and product terms change through the year, and Canada only gained its fourth lender in October 2025, so an undated review can be badly out of step.
Who reviews reverse mortgage lenders in Canada?
Very few people do it independently. Most reverse mortgage reviews in Canada are published either by a lender about its own product, or by a rating site collecting comments about a single company. Independent mortgage brokers are the ones who see all four lenders' offers on real files, because they arrange mortgages with each of them. This site publishes a full review of each of the four lenders and a side-by-side comparison of all of them.
Do all four reverse mortgage lenders offer the same product?
At the core, yes. All four lend against home equity with no required monthly mortgage payments, add the interest to the balance, and repay when the home is sold, the owner moves out permanently, or the last borrower passes away. All four carry the No Negative Equity Guarantee, and all four require advice from your own lawyer before anything becomes final. What differs is pricing, early-repayment terms, the product variants each lender offers, and how much each will lend on the same home.
Compare all four reverse mortgage lenders
Get a free, no-obligation estimate and see what every reverse mortgage lender in Canada would offer for your age and home — with no impact on your credit.
Get my free estimate 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.