New data reveals surprisingly good news about B.C. credit
While we constantly hear about the high cost of living and the financial strain many people are facing, new data reveals some good news about B.C. credit.
TransUnion, a credit bureau, recently released its second-quarter report on credit industry insights, revealing that B.C.’s overall credit picture is actually better than what it is Canada-wide.
In Q2, B.C.’s total consumer delinquency (when a payment is 90 days or more past due) dropped from 1.71 per cent to 1.67 per cent. Meanwhile, the national rate actually increased to 1.81 per cent.
“If you’re benchmarking against the rest of Canada, B.C. is faring relatively well as being relatively resilient,” said Matt Fabian, TransUnion’s senior director of financial services research and consulting, in an interview with Daily Hive.
However, B.C.’s mortgage delinquency — which TransUnion defines as when a household misses two consecutive mortgage payments — increased by seven basis points in Q2 to 0.28 per cent.
But Fabian pointed out that 99.72 per cent of consumers are still making their payments on time.
“Delinquency rates remain really, really low,” he said. “But it is a large increase, and it’s worth noting. A seven basis point increase is still relatively significant, even though it’s a small number.”
B.C. had the second-largest increase after Ontario, which Fabian suggested could be due to expensive housing markets in each province. For example, the benchmark price of a Vancouver home was $1,088,800 in July 2026.
“Borrowers in these markets tend to carry larger mortgage balances.”
This means that when interest rates go up (like they did in 2023 and 2024), people can experience “mortgage payment shock.”
“All of a sudden they’re forced to make trade-offs,” Fabian said. “Where do I get that money? Do I have to shift my disposable income and maybe not do other things?”
He added that most consumers find this manageable, and that it “really just means shuffling around finances, and allocating a little bit more to mortgage, maybe giving up on a couple of little things.”
But there is a small portion of households where this will become a huge financial stress, especially given the period of high inflation we’ve gone through.
“They’re also making trade-offs [like], ‘Do I fill up my gas tank? How much groceries do I buy?’ And then even after they’ve made those decisions, ‘How much do I do that versus pay down my debt?’ And then, ‘What debt do I pay off?'”
He reiterated that most consumers are still resilient, but this does result in the delinquency increase they noticed.
What about Canada’s debt?
The TransUnion report also noted that Canadian consumer debt hit a record $2.46 trillion in the second quarter of 2026.
Fabian said this number looks pretty high “from a broad balance perspective.”
“But when you start to break it down, 1.9 trillion of that is mortgage, and so you know it’s not all bad debt in the sense that mortgages are building equity for some people,” he said.
Meanwhile, non-mortgage debt on a national level has been “relatively stable,” which Fabian said is more of an indicator of credit health.