Canadian banks slash rime lending rate
Duffie Osental
Mortgage Broker News
Canada’s largest banks have slashed their prime lending rate to 2.45% from 2.95%, matching last week’s move by the Bank of Canada to slash the overnight rate by another 50 basis points.
RBC Royal Bank, Scotiabank, Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD Bank), BMO Bank of Montreal, and CIBC have announced that the new rate will be effective today, March 30. Meanwhile, National Bank of Canada will reduce its prime rate effective tomorrow, March 31.
This is the third time this month that the big banks have cut their prime lending rate. The Bank of Canada slashed interest rates late last week, saying that “decisive fiscal policy action in Canada” was necessary to “support individuals and businesses and to minimize any permanent damage to the structure of the economy.”
“The bank is playing an important complementary role in this effort,” BoC said in a statement. “Its interest rate setting cushions the impact of the shocks by easing the cost of borrowing. Its efforts to maintain the functioning of the financial system are helping keep credit available to people and companies. The intent of our decision today is to support the financial system in its central role of providing credit in the economy, and to lay the foundation for the economy’s return to normalcy.”
Copyright © 2020 Key Media
