Mortgage upstarts try to take on the big banks. Few survive

Canada’s Big Seven lenders have done nothing but grow their market share, with competitors losing 1.2 percentage points of the market since 2015. Photo by Peter J Thompson/National Post

If you’re a prime mortgage competitor and don’t have a bank logo on your pay stub, your life’s purpose is to spend every waking moment plotting the banks’ slow, glorious demise.

Good luck with that.

Canada’s six banking colossi — plus Desjardins — are mortgage leviathans. They control nearly four out of five home loans (78 per cent), according to Wowa Data Labs’ Hanif Bayat. If you exclude non-prime mortgages, a sandbox the Big Seven don’t play in, their dominance is even more pronounced.

Every few months, a new fintech shows up claiming it will disrupt the banks, and every few months, the banks b