Borrowers pinched by rate hikes: survey

‘Leveraging themselves to the hilt’

TORONTO • Four in 10 Canadians say that if interest rates rise any further they fear they will be in financial trouble, a new poll suggests.

The survey conducted for insolvency firm MNP Ltd. also found one in three Canadians say they are already feeling the effects of increasing interest rates.

“It’s clear that people are nowhere near prepared for a higher-rate environment,” MNP president Grant Bazian said in a statement Monday. “The good news is that there seems to be at least the acknowledgment now that rates are going to climb, which might make people reassess their spending habits — especially using credit.”

The results of the survey, conducted online by Ipsos for MNP between Sept. 18 and Sept. 21, comes after the Bank of Canada raised its key interest-rate target twice this year. The moves by the central bank in turn prompted the big banks to raise their prime lending rates, pushing up the cost of variable-rate mortgages and other loans such as home equity lines of credit that are tied to the benchmark rate.

The Bank of Canada is expected to make its next rate announcement Wednesday. Economists expect no change.

Jamie Feehely, managing director of Canadianstructured finance for ratings agency DBRS, says he doesn’t anticipate interest rates to go up until next year. However, that timeline is fluid given the wide range of factors that could impact the Canadian economy, such as the outcome of negotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement, he added.

“It’s really just far too difficult to tell where rates are going to go in 2018 given the geopolitical risks and just the external factors affecting Canada,” Feehely said.

Borrowers with fixed-rate mortgages will have seen no change in the cost of their loans, but rates for new fixed-rate mortgages and those seeking to renew their mortgages have also moved higher in recent months.

The survey of 2,005 adult Canadians also showed that 7 in 10 say that with interest rates headed higher, they will be more careful about how they spend.

However, 42 per cent say they are $200 or less away from insolvency, with little cushion to pay unexpected bills or expenses. Canadian debt levels are the highest they’ve ever been and high housing prices have been a driving factor, said Feehely.

“To get that nice house on a nice street that is big enough to put kids in it, they are just absolutely leveraging themselves to the hilt,” he said.

The polling industry’s professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.