OTTAWA: Bank of Montreal is bundling nearly $2 billion of prime Canadian mortgages into securities, in a first-of-its-kind deal as the government looks to reduce support for the fast-growing housing sector.
The bonds are backed by prime residential mortgages that are not insured by the government. Canadian banks have historically packaged federally guaranteed loans into bonds, but last year the nation tightened access to taxpayer-backed mortgage backing, in an effort to help tamp down rapid home price growth in areas like Toronto and Vancouver. The mortgage-backed securities offering is the first from a major Canadian bank to bundle uninsured prime mortgages. “This is a really unique deal in the Canadian market,” Richard Hunt, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service who rated the deal, said in an interview. “Given the pent-up demand that we think is out there on the part of banks and non-banks to have a vehicle to fund their residential mortgages, to have an RMBS market, we think this could be a significant transaction.”
