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Inside CMHC

CMHC CMHC is the biggest mortgage default insurer in Canada, and one of Canada’s biggest companies in general.

The federal government mandates that CMHC create policies to support Canada’s housing market. Yet, with home prices getting lofty, these very policies have been under the media microscope.

Most journalists analyze the default insurance market with the best of intentions. Due to a lack of publicly available facts, however, it’s become more common for the media to mischaracterize certain policies.  Recent stories from the National Post and the Globe made industry claims that left readers with a variety of unanswered questions. It therefore seemed logical (to us) to contact CMHC directly, pose these questions, and clarify from the source.

The primary goal was to learn about what happens behind the scenes of mortgage insurance, and share what we learned.  In the end, the information that follows gave us a much better sense for how insurer policies impact Canada’s housing market. 

Along the way, we were fortunate enough to speak with Pierre Serré.  Pierre is CMHC's Vice-President of Insurance Products and Business Development.  Below you’ll find the interview we did with Pierre, sprinkled with “side notes” (the stuff in italics) that we collected throughout our research.

Inside CMHC

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Last modified: April 28, 2014

Robert McLister is one of Canada’s best-known mortgage experts. A mortgage columnist for The Globe and Mail, interest rate analyst and editor of MortgageLogic.news, Rob has been covering Canada's mortgage market since 2007.

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