Using two complementary approaches, we investigate the importance of U.S. macroeconomic news in driving low-frequency fluctuations in the term structure of interest rates in Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom. We find that U.S. macroeconomic news is particularly important to explain changes in the expectation components of the nominal, real and break-even inflation rates of small open economies.
We examine how life insurers manage liquidity risks created by their business model. We find that Canadian life insurers did not face significant liquidity draws and continued their usual investment behaviour during the COVID-19 crisis and as interest rates increased in 2022.
This supervisory policy provides an explanation of the prescribed supervisory information provisions and sets out the Bank of Canada’s expectations for payments service providers’ compliance with non-disclosure requirements related to prescribed supervisory information under subsection 64(1) of the Retail Payment Activities Act and sections 37 to 38 of the Retail Payment Activities Regulations.
This supervisory policy outlines what records payment service providers should keep and retain to comply with their record-keeping obligations under the Retail Payment Activities Act and the Retail Payment Activities Regulations.
To facilitate the monitoring of the transition away from CDOR based loans to CORRA and Term CORRA, CARR will publish a monthly report on the aggregated outstanding amount of CDOR loans that have not transitioned to other benchmarks, as well as the volume of new loans, including any transitioned loans, referencing CORRA and/or Term CORRA.
We investigate the unintended consequences of the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). Originally designed to help borrowers refinance after the 2008–09 global financial crisis, HARP inadvertently strengthened the market power of incumbent lenders by creating a cost advantage for them. Despite a 2013 policy rectifying this cost advantage, we still find significant welfare losses for borrowers.
Monetary policy is working to reduce inflationary pressures and inflation is coming down, although it will take more time to see if this progress proves durable. The Bank projects that inflation will stay around 3% into the second quarter of 2024, ease below 2.5% in the second half of the year and return to target in 2025.