Reverse mortgage blog
Reverse Mortgage Statistics Canada (2026)
General information for Canadian homeowners, not personal financial, legal, or tax advice. Rates and lender details verified as of October 31, 2026.
Key takeaways
- Canadians owe $10.9 billion on reverse mortgages, and balances have grown an average of 20.9% per year over the past decade (The Globe and Mail, from OSFI filings).
- The market has doubled in under five years — from $5.4 billion in February 2022 (Wealth Professional, OSFI data) to $10.9 billion by mid-2026.
- HomeEquity Bank holds roughly 75% of the market, Equitable Bank about 23%, and the two newest lenders — Bloom and Home Trust — combine for under 2.5% (The Globe and Mail).
- Canada had one reverse mortgage lender until 2018 and has four since Home Trust launched EquityAccess in October 2025 (Home Trust press release).
- Losses are rare: of the more than 13,000 reverse mortgages purchased by CHIP Mortgage Trust since 2000, just 152 — about 1% — had experienced a loss as of February 2026, and the average loan in that pool stood at 42.3% of home value (DBRS Morningstar, April 2026).
- Posted 5-year fixed rates run from 6.23% to 6.49% as of October 31, 2026: HomeEquity Bank cut its CHIP rate to 6.49% on October 29, after raising it to 6.94% on August 31, while Equitable Bank, Home Trust, and Bloom held at 6.23% to 6.33%. A dated snapshot from the lenders' own rate pages (chip.ca).
The key reverse mortgage statistics for Canada in 2026: $10.9 billion owed, average growth of 20.9% a year over the past decade, four government regulated lenders, and roughly 60,000 borrowing households — and every number on this page carries a named source.
Anyone searching for Canadian reverse mortgage numbers runs into the same wall: the figures are scattered across regulator filings, bank quarterly reports, rating-agency documents, and paywalled news stories — and no single page gathers them with sources attached. This page is that missing page. It holds the market size, the growth curve, the lender market shares, current rates as a dated snapshot, the loss data, and how Canada compares with the United Kingdom and the United States. If the product itself is new to you, the plain-language guide to reverse mortgages covers the basics before the numbers.
How much reverse mortgage debt do Canadians owe?
Canadians owed $10.9 billion on reverse mortgages as of mid-2026, and that balance has grown at an average of 20.9% per year over the past decade, according to OSFI filings reported by The Globe and Mail in June 2026. Canadian Mortgage Trends independently put the figure at roughly $11 billion a month later.
The growth is not a recent blip. New originations — freshly opened reverse mortgages, before interest accrues — have grown more than 16% annually on their own, per the same Globe analysis. And the balance curve tells the story in three points:
| Date | Total balances | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 (implied) | ~$1.6 billion | Back-calculated from the decade growth rate reported by The Globe and Mail |
| February 2022 | $5.4 billion | Wealth Professional, from OSFI filings |
| Mid-2026 | $10.9 billion | The Globe and Mail, from OSFI filings |
Reverse mortgage balances in Canada, 2016–2026
OSFI-filed balances as reported by Wealth Professional (2022) and The Globe and Mail (2026). The 2016 bar is implied by the decade growth rate, not a filed figure.
The four numbers that define the market’s size and speed:
Put simply: the market has doubled in under five years. Two forces drive it — an aging population sitting on paid-up homes, and a lender market that finally became competitive. Both get their own numbers below.
How many Canadians actually have a reverse mortgage?
Roughly 60,000 Canadian households have a reverse mortgage as of mid-2026 — about 2% of the roughly 2.66 million homeowners aged 55 and older who could qualify. Together, those households owe the $10.9 billion above.
That 60,000 is an estimate, because nobody publishes the real count — not OSFI, not any lender. So the math is shown here in the open. Take the $10.9 billion owed and divide it by a plausible average balance. At a $250,000 average, $10.9 billion ÷ $250,000 ≈ 44,000 households. At a $150,000 average, $10.9 billion ÷ $150,000 ≈ 73,000 households. The middle of that range sits near 60,000, and that is the working figure used on this page.
Set that count against the size of the eligible pool — industry estimates reported by Money.ca put it at roughly 2.66 million Canadian homeowners aged 55 and older — and take-up lands somewhere near 2 in every 100 eligible households. For a product category growing 20% a year, that is a strikingly small base. It is the single statistic that best explains why every lender in the category keeps investing: almost the entire eligible market has not yet touched the product.
The household estimate, in four numbers:
A note on method, because it matters: the average-balance assumption is the soft spot in that estimate, and no Canadian source publishes a verified average. The range used here is deliberately wide, and the resulting spread — 44,000 to 73,000 — is shown rather than hidden. When a page quotes a suspiciously exact count of Canadian reverse mortgage borrowers, it is worth asking where the number came from.
Who takes out a reverse mortgage in Canada?
Most borrowers are homeowners in their early seventies, well past the minimum age of 55. Many use the money to pay off debt, and a fast-growing number use it to help family.
No lender publishes a borrower profile on a regular schedule. So the figures below come from the largest lender’s own statements and from DBRS Morningstar, the independent firm that checks that lender’s loans for investors. Each figure is dated to when it was said.
The typical borrower is in their early seventies
“Historically, the average age of our clients is 72,” HomeEquity Bank’s chief executive told Canadian Mortgage Professional in June 2017. He put it in the early 70s again in a January 2020 interview summarized by HousingWire.
Age also sets the size of the loan. The older the borrower, the larger the share of the home’s value a lender will offer.
Paying off debt is a big reason, and helping family is growing fast
Paying off debt is a big reason. In that same 2020 interview, between 30% and 40% of HomeEquity Bank’s business was reported as coming from customers paying off debt, including regular mortgages still owing at retirement.
Carrying a mortgage into retirement is far more common than it used to be. A Royal LePage survey found that 29% of Canadians who are recently retired or nearing retirement expect to keep making mortgage payments on their home, up from 8% in 1999. Among Canadians aged 55 to 64, mortgage balances rose about 6% in 2025, the fastest growth of any age group, per Statistics Canada data. Both figures were reported by Canadian Mortgage Trends in April 2026.
Helping family is the newer pattern. In 2025, the number of HomeEquity Bank customers using home equity to gift money to relatives rose 32% over the year before, according to the lender, as reported by The Globe and Mail in August 2025. Much of that money went toward down payments, and some toward weddings and tuition.
Borrowers in the audited pool still own well over half the home
The share of the home that’s borrowed has the hardest data behind it. In the audited CHIP pool — the CHIP loans DBRS Morningstar checks for investors — the average loan, weighted by size, stood at 42.3% of home value in February 2026, per DBRS Morningstar. So the average borrower in that pool still held well over half of the home.
The figure has edged down across the agency’s last four releases: 45.2% in May 2023, 44.8% in July 2024, 43.9% in February 2025, and 42.3% in February 2026.
The borrower profile, in four numbers:
Three of the four numbers come from one lender. It holds roughly three-quarters of the market, so the figures describe the typical borrower well and the newer lenders’ borrowers less well. The age and purpose figures carry their dates because they’re past statements, not current measurements.
Who are Canada’s four lenders — and who holds the market?
Canada had exactly one reverse mortgage lender for over three decades. It now has four, and the newest arrived less than a year ago:
| Lender | In the market since | Estimated share of balances |
|---|---|---|
| HomeEquity Bank (CHIP) | 1986 | ~75% |
| Equitable Bank (Flex) | 2018 | ~23% |
| Bloom Finance | 2021 | <2.5% combined |
| Home Trust (EquityAccess) | October 2025 |
Market shares are as reported by The Globe and Mail in June 2026. The incumbency gap is enormous — HomeEquity Bank’s CHIP program dates to 1986 and its portfolio passed $5 billion in 2021 and $6.28 billion in 2022, per its own releases — but the challengers are growing faster from smaller bases. Equitable Bank’s decumulation portfolio, which contains its Flex reverse mortgages alongside insurance lending, reached $3.2 billion in its second fiscal quarter of 2026, up 26% year over year, with the bank calling reverse mortgages “a top priority growth business” in results covered by Canadian Mortgage Trends. The smallest challenger punches above its size on product: Bloom’s lifetime fixed rate and portable structure, both firsts in this market, arrived with its 2021 launch.
The lender scoreboard behind those shares:
The newest entrant changed the market’s structure, not just its count. Home Trust launched EquityAccess in October 2025 exclusively through the mortgage-broker channel — there is no direct-to-public option — and its EquityAccess Boost tier for borrowers 70 and older reaches up to 60% of home value — the market’s top tier, against the typical cap of 55% (Financial Consumer Agency of Canada). Because the amount is set almost entirely by age, how much a reverse mortgage pays out climbs age by age. Home Trust now lends in seven provinces — Ontario, Nova Scotia, Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador (hometrust.ca, July 2026) — and its three tiers, real borrowing caps, and pricing get a full examination in the independent review of Home Trust EquityAccess. A four-lender market where one lender is broker-only, and where offers on the same file genuinely differ, is exactly the market where comparing all four reverse mortgage lenders in Canada pays — no single lender’s phone line can show a homeowner the whole board.
What do the 2026 numbers mean for your home?
A free, no-obligation estimate shows what your age and home would actually qualify for across the market — with no impact on your credit.
Get my free estimateWhat are reverse mortgage rates in Canada right now?
Posted 5-year fixed reverse mortgage rates run from 6.23% to 6.49% as of October 31, 2026. A wider gap opened on August 31, when HomeEquity Bank raised its CHIP 5-year rate by 0.55 points to 6.94% and the other three lenders held, following rising Government of Canada bond yields, as covered in reverse mortgage rates are rising. On October 29, HomeEquity Bank cut it back to 6.49%.
That came two months after all four lenders cut their posted rates within weeks of one another in late June, as reported by Canadian Mortgage Trends. The table below was checked on each lender’s own rate page on October 31, 2026:
| Lender | 5-year fixed (posted), July 2026 | October 31, 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equitable Bank (Flex Lite) | 6.23% | 6.23% | no change |
| Home Trust (EquityAccess) | 6.23% | 6.23% | no change |
| Bloom | 6.33% | 6.33% | no change |
| HomeEquity Bank (CHIP) | 6.39% | 6.49% (from October 29; 6.94% from August 31) | +0.10 |
Context for those numbers: the Bank of Canada raised its policy rate to 2.5% on October 28, 2026, and the big banks raised prime to 4.70% the next day. Reverse mortgage rates run a premium over regular mortgages — in mid-June 2026, The Globe and Mail measured the lowest reverse mortgage 5-year fixed at 6.44% against 3.99% for the best regular 5-year fixed, a gap of about 2.4 percentage points. The premium exists because the lender may wait a decade or more to be repaid, with no required monthly mortgage payments along the way. How that premium stacks up against a bank’s home equity line of credit — and why the cheaper line is often out of reach on income tests — is worked through in the reverse mortgage vs HELOC comparison.
Two cautions belong beside any rate table. Posted rates move often — these are a dated snapshot, verified October 31, 2026, not a live feed. And the posted rate is the start of a file, not the end of it: actual pricing depends on age, property, and product, which is why two lenders posting the same number can offer the same homeowner different deals. Why the rates sit where they do — and which other numbers decide the real cost — is the subject of the dedicated guide to reverse mortgage rates in Canada.
The timing shows how the competition works. Before the June cuts, none of the four lenders had moved its posted rates since the fall of 2025. In March 2025, the three lenders then in the market cut to nearly identical levels within days of one another. And lenders now phone brokers with rate specials — something Canadian Mortgage Trends reports never used to happen in this market. A posted rate is the retail price: unadvertised broker-channel specials routinely land below it, which is one more reason the table above is a starting point, not a quote.
Equitable Bank’s limited-time 4.99% one-year fixed rate ended on October 16, 2026. Its Flex Lite one-year fixed is now 6.79% (October 31, 2026). A one-year term resets after twelve months at whatever that lender offers then.
On costs beyond the rate: set-up fees across the market run $995 to $1,795 and appraisals $300 to $600, per an April 2026 market survey by Money.ca, with independent legal advice billed separately on top. A full cost walk-through with Ontario-specific figures lives in the complete Ontario reverse mortgage guide.
The numbers that sit around the posted rates:
To see what those rates do to your own numbers, the calculator below takes your age, home value, and the amount you want, and shows how the balance and your remaining equity change over time.
Here's What Happens to Your Equity
Adjust the sliders below to see how your equity can change over time.
Need more than this estimate?In some situations we can structure additional financing to unlock more of your equity — contact us to see if it fits your situation.
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Your 15-Year Forecast
In 15 years, your home is projected to be worth $1,935,282 (at 4.5% growth). Even with the growing loan balance, you would still have$1,288,355in remaining equity!
*Disclaimer: These projections are for illustration purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Projections assume 4.5% annual appreciation and 6.44% interest rate. Actual results may vary based on market conditions and individual circumstances.
Your 15-Year Forecast
In 15 years, your home is projected to be worth $1,935,282 (at 4.5% growth). Even with the growing loan balance, you would still have$1,288,355in remaining equity!
This calculator is for illustration only. Your real numbers depend on your age, lender, rate, and home value — which is exactly what a free estimate works out for you.
How often do reverse mortgages actually go wrong?
Rarely — far less often than the horror-story headlines suggest. This is the one corner of the market where hard data exists, because a rating agency audits it.
DBRS Morningstar rates the notes that fund part of the CHIP portfolio. In April 2026 it reported that since 2000, only 152 of the more than 13,000 reverse mortgages purchased by CHIP Mortgage Trust had experienced a loss, as of February 2026. A loss here means the amount owing when the borrower left the home was more than the home sold for, after selling costs.
That’s about 1%, across more than two decades that included the 2008 financial crisis and the 2022–23 housing correction. The count has crept up slowly with each release: 125 in March 2023, 143 in August 2024, 147 in March 2025, and 152 in February 2026.
The audited numbers, side by side:
The same report shows why losses stay rare. Every loan in the pool started with at least 40% of the home’s value untouched. The appraiser’s value of each home is marked down for region, property type, and location before the loan amount is set. And every property is formally reappraised at least every five years.
The pool’s weighted average loan-to-value — the loan balance measured against home value — sat at 42.3% in February 2026, even after years of compounding interest. In plain terms, the average borrower in the audited pool still held well over half of their home’s value.
One change between releases is worth knowing. DBRS Morningstar’s 2023 release put the minimum starting equity at 60%, and its 2024, 2025, and 2026 releases put it at 40%. This page uses the current figure.
Add the No Negative Equity Guarantee, the industry-standard promise that a borrower or estate never repays more than the home’s fair market value at the time the mortgage becomes due, as long as homeowner obligations are met, and large-scale borrower losses become structurally hard to produce. The guarantee has a plain meaning at sale time: if the home’s sale falls short of the amount owing, the lender covers the difference — HomeEquity Bank states this directly in its published guarantee, and Home Trust publishes the same promise on its own product page. Read the 152 losses in the audited pool with that in mind: those shortfalls were absorbed by the lender, not billed to the families. How these loans actually run — from qualifying through interest to repayment — is walked through step by step in how a reverse mortgage works in Canada.
None of that makes the product risk-free — compounding interest, early-exit penalties, and renewal pricing are real, and the documented Canadian cases where things did go wrong are examined case by case in reverse mortgage horror stories: what’s real in Canada. The statistics simply say those cases are the exception, not the pattern. The full weighing — every advantage beside its disadvantage, with these numbers in place — is in reverse mortgage pros and cons in Canada. A related question families ask often — what happens to the loan if a borrower moves into long-term care — has its own clear answer, and so does the bigger one behind it: what happens to a reverse mortgage when the borrower dies.
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.
Why does the market keep growing?
Demographics, mostly — the customer base is expanding faster than almost any other in Canadian lending. On July 1, 2026, Statistics Canada counted 8,378,381 Canadians aged 65 and older — 20.0% of the population, one in five, and up 3.3% in a single year. Newfoundland and Labrador has the highest share of any province, at 25.7%, more than one resident in four.
An aging, home-owning population meeting still-under-2% take-up is the whole growth thesis in one sentence. It is also why the recent pattern — four lenders, synchronized rate cuts, a broker-only entrant arriving with the market’s top advertised lending tier — looks less like a mature market and more like the early stages of one.
How does Canada compare with the UK and the US?
Canada is the young market of the three. The United Kingdom’s equivalent product, equity release, moved £2.57 billion in new lending in 2025 alone — up 11% from £2.3 billion in 2024 — and more than 680,000 UK households have used it since 1991, releasing over £50 billion of property wealth, per the Equity Release Council, the UK industry body. The average single UK release reached £123,174 in late 2025.
The United States runs the world’s largest program: the federally insured reverse mortgage (called a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage there) has backed over 1.1 million loans since 1989, per the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s program reviews.
The scale gap, in four numbers:
| Metric | Canada | United Kingdom | United States |
|---|---|---|---|
| Households served | ~60,000 (estimate, active) | 680,000+ since 1991 | 1.1 million+ insured since 1989 |
| Recent scale | $10.9B total owed (2026) | £2.57B new lending in 2025 | 1.1M+ cumulative program loans |
| Trajectory | +20.9%/yr for a decade | +11% in 2025 | Mature program |
The comparison cuts both ways. It shows Canadian take-up is unusually low — the UK has served more than ten times as many households over its history as Canada’s estimated active count today. And it shows what a normalized market looks like: in the UK, borrowing against home equity in retirement is an ordinary planning tool, not an exotic last resort. Canada’s growth curve suggests it is heading the same way, which is precisely why the numbers on this page will keep moving.
Frequently asked questions
How much reverse mortgage debt is there in Canada?
Canadians owed $10.9 billion on reverse mortgages as of mid-2026, based on OSFI filings reported by The Globe and Mail. Canadian Mortgage Trends independently put the figure at roughly $11 billion in July 2026. Balances have grown about 20.9% per year on average over the past decade.
How many Canadians have a reverse mortgage?
No official count is published anywhere. Dividing the $10.9 billion owed by plausible average balances of $150,000 to $250,000 suggests roughly 44,000 to 73,000 households — around 60,000 as a best estimate, or about 2% of the roughly 2.66 million homeowners 55 and older who could qualify.
Who is the largest reverse mortgage lender in Canada?
HomeEquity Bank, whose CHIP reverse mortgage dates back to 1986, holds roughly 75% of balances. Equitable Bank holds about 23%, and the two newest lenders — Bloom and Home Trust — combine for under 2.5%, per Globe and Mail reporting in 2026.
How many reverse mortgage lenders are there in Canada?
Four: HomeEquity Bank (since 1986), Equitable Bank (2018), Bloom (2021), and Home Trust, which launched EquityAccess in October 2025. Canada had a single reverse mortgage lender until 2018. All four are government regulated.
What are reverse mortgage rates in Canada right now?
As of October 31, 2026, from each lender's own rate page, posted 5-year fixed rates were: Equitable Bank 6.23%, Home Trust 6.23%, Bloom 6.33%, HomeEquity Bank 6.49%. HomeEquity Bank raised its rate to 6.94% on August 31, 2026 and cut it to 6.49% on October 29; the other three held at the levels they set in the late-June round of cuts. Posted rates move often — treat these as a dated snapshot.
How often do reverse mortgages actually go wrong in Canada?
Rarely, by the only public loss data that exists. Since 2000, just 152 of the more than 13,000 reverse mortgages purchased by CHIP Mortgage Trust had experienced a loss as of February 2026 — about 1%, per DBRS Morningstar's April 2026 rating release. Conservative lending limits and the No Negative Equity Guarantee are the structural reasons, and under that guarantee the shortfall is absorbed by the lender, not billed to the family.
Who takes out a reverse mortgage in Canada?
Mostly homeowners in their early 70s, well above the minimum age of 55: HomeEquity Bank, the largest lender, put its average client at 72 in 2017 and in the early 70s in 2020. Paying off debt was about 30–40% of its business in 2020, and customers gifting home equity to family rose 32% in 2025. In the audited CHIP pool, the average loan was 42.3% of home value in February 2026.
Is the reverse mortgage market bigger in the UK or the US than in Canada?
Both are older and larger. UK homeowners released £2.57 billion in 2025 alone, and more than 680,000 UK households have used equity release since 1991, per the Equity Release Council. The US federal program has insured over 1.1 million reverse mortgages since 1989. Canada's roughly 2% take-up among eligible homeowners is low by comparison.
Sources
- The Globe and Mail — “Canada’s reverse mortgage market has quietly grown to almost $11-billion” (Hanif Bayat), June 16, 2026. theglobeandmail.com
- Canadian Mortgage Trends — “Why Canada’s reverse mortgage rates are falling” (Jared Lindzon), July 16, 2026. canadianmortgagetrends.com
- Statistics Canada — “Canada’s population estimates: Age and gender, 2026,” September 23, 2026, and table 17-10-0005-01 (population estimates by age, July 1). statcan.gc.ca (The Daily) · statcan.gc.ca (table)
- Bank of Canada — policy rate announcement, October 28, 2026. bankofcanada.ca
- Bank of Canada — policy rate announcement, September 2, 2026. bankofcanada.ca
- DBRS Morningstar — CHIP Mortgage Trust Series 2026-1 rating finalized (loss history, pool loan-to-value, minimum equity, reappraisal), April 29, 2026; earlier figures from the Series 2023-1 release, July 2023. dbrs.morningstar.com (2026) · dbrs.morningstar.com (2023)
- Wealth Professional — “Senior citizens in Canada have amassed $5.4 billion in reverse mortgage debt” (OSFI data), May 12, 2022. wealthprofessional.ca
- Equity Release Council (UK) — Q4 and full-year 2025 lending figures, January 2026. equityreleasecouncil.com
- Home Trust — “Home Trust launches EquityAccess reverse mortgage,” October 20, 2025, and the EquityAccess product page. newswire.ca · hometrust.ca
- HomeEquity Bank — portfolio milestone releases, June 2021 and December 2022. newswire.ca (2021) · newswire.ca (2022)
- Money.ca — reverse mortgage rate and fee survey (Romana King), April 3, 2026. money.ca
- Canadian Mortgage Trends — “EQB gains uninsured mortgage share as credit pressures persist” (decumulation portfolio, third fiscal quarter 2026), August 31, 2026. canadianmortgagetrends.com
- Lender rate pages, each checked October 4, 2026 — HomeEquity Bank (rates as of August 31, 2026), Equitable Bank, Bloom (as of October 4, 2026), and Home Trust. chip.ca · eqbank.ca · bloomfin.ca · hometrust.ca
- US Department of Housing and Urban Development — annual actuarial review of the federal reverse mortgage program, 2024. hud.gov
- Financial Consumer Agency of Canada — reverse mortgages consumer guidance (the typical 55%-of-home-value borrowing cap). canada.ca
- HomeEquity Bank — CHIP frequently asked questions (the published No Negative Equity Guarantee wording). chip.ca
- Canadian Mortgage Professional — HomeEquity Bank record originations, chief executive’s average-client-age statement, June 12, 2017. mpamag.com
- HousingWire — “Reverse mortgages continue booming north of the border,” summarizing a Financial Post interview with HomeEquity Bank’s chief executive, January 14, 2020. housingwire.com
- The Globe and Mail — “More retirees are turning to reverse mortgages to help their kids with down payments. But is it worth the risk?” (Meera Raman), August 21, 2025. theglobeandmail.com
Wondering what the market’s numbers mean for your own home? Get a free, no-obligation 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) trusted by more than 1,200 Ontario homeowners since 2009. 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 October 31, 2026.