Canada has a new entry in the mortgage lending field as Equity Financial Trust received final regulatory approval to become a deposit-taking institution and will immediately begin accepting applications for alternative residential mortgages.
Canada has a new entry in the mortgage lending field as Equity Financial Trust received final regulatory approval to become a deposit-taking institution and will immediately begin accepting applications for alternative residential mortgages.
“Deals have already started to flow in,” Equity Financial Trust CEO Nick Kyprianou told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “We had spoken to brokers over the past four weeks, getting them signed up and as of yesterday we started contacting them to let them know we are now accepting deals.”
Kyprianou indicated that EFT has already signed up approximately 200 individual brokers.
On the deposit side, he said that EFT has signed up two large securities dealers and that the company is doing “nominee business only.”
“We’re actually over-capitalized right now, so we don’t need to go to the deposit market for another month or two. Our target for year one is to do $100 million in closed business and we think we should achieve that goal.”
According to Kyprianou, ETF will concentrate on the Alt-A and B mortgage market that they estimate makes up around 10 per cent of the total Canadian mortgage market.
“We’re looking at people that are being underserved by the big banks,” he said. “But the real estate must be marketable, that’s the foundation of the underwriting model.”
