Equity Financial Trust Company applies to convert to Schedule I Bank | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

My quarterly review of the Canada Gazette is keeping me hopping & posting! 🙂

Apologies for the brevity and lack of detailed analysis and/or speculation as I continue to highlight these.

Equity Financial Trust Company is a publicly-traded concern that is in the process of completing a going-private transaction that has a wholly-owned federal trust company subsidiary Equity Trust. It has applied to convert Equity Trust into Haventree Bank through a Scheduled I chartered bank license via letters patent of continuance.

It's hard to discern the reason, it could be to offer GICs and HISAs nationally like Home Bank/Home Trust's Oaken Financial brand, though their press release indicates only wanting to expand its book of business (it's an alternative mortgage lender) beyond Ontario. Still, I see a national broker-sourced and possibly direct-to-consumer GIC offering in their future. And, with a name like Haventree, I can't help but reminded of Oaken's tree logo and think a similar path could be possible. 😉

Part of the reason could be a desire to both originate, service and hold mortgages on its books, following recent regulatory changes that would seem to make it more difficult to sell mortgages through CMHC sponsored securitization vehicles that would now no longer be eligible for bulk portfolio insurance (where the bank, not the consumer, pays the premiums to de-risk its mortgage book). 🙂

Cheers,
Doug