Morneau Not Considering New Rules for Canadian Private Lenders

(Bloomberg) -- Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau said he’s not considering any additional regulations to address the growth of private mortgage lenders.

“I’m not currently considering any stress tests on private mortgage lenders,” Morneau told reporters in Ottawa. Asked if he was concerned about the rise in private lending in Canada’s mortgage market, Morneau said there are no specific measures he’s looking at.

“We’re always looking at the entire mortgage space to make sure we have a system that is providing the adequate protections for Canadians. That means we need to think about obviously the space that we are directly regulating and what our regulations do in terms of impacts on other parts of the provision of that sort of credit,” he said. “But I don’t have anything specific in that regard right now.”

Reuters reported on Jan. 25 that Canada was considering subjecting private lenders to the same mortgage stress test rules faced by banks, to prevent housing market destabilization from lenders’ rapid growth. The report cited three unnamed people with direct knowledge of the matter.

To contact the reporters on this story: Josh Wingrove in Ottawa at jwingrove4@bloomberg.net;Theophilos Argitis in Ottawa at targitis@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Theophilos Argitis at targitis@bloomberg.net, Greg Quinn

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