The lock came off the door in November 2024
Almost every piece of Canadian mortgage advice written before 2025 tells you that switching lenders at renewal triggers the stress test while staying put does not, so you are better off staying. That was true. It is not true now. OSFI removed the minimum qualifying rate for uninsured straight switches effective 21 November 2024. Insured borrowers have been exempt since 2023 under the Canadian Mortgage Charter, and portfolio-insured mortgages were brought into line in December 2024. Uninsured switches rose 34% among the minority who found out.
Note the accurate framing: renewal with your existing lender was never subject to the stress test in the first place. What changed is that the penalty for shopping was removed.
What a straight switch is
All four conditions have to hold. A transfer between federally regulated financial institutions; no increase in the remaining contractual amortization; no increase in the loan amount except up to $3,000 for transaction costs; and a stand-alone residential mortgage, not part of a combined loan plan. Refinancing, taking equity out, or extending the amortization all bring the stress test back.
Exempt from the minimum qualifying rate is not exempt from underwriting. The new lender still approves you on income, credit and property, and may use different criteria from your current one.
What staying costs
Nothing in cash, and that convenience is exactly what you are being charged for. The charge is in the rate. Bank of Canada data for June 2026 puts the average uninsured five-year fixed mortgage actually written at 4.35% while the best available was 4.24%. That 0.11 point gap is the average cost of not shopping, and averages hide the tail. Some renewal letters arrive far above the market.
The lock nobody mentions
How your mortgage is registered on title can make a switch far more expensive than the table above. A standard charge is registered for the exact loan amount and can usually be assigned to a new lender. A collateral charge is registered for more than the loan, often up to 125% of the property's value, and most lenders will not accept assignment of one. Switching then means a full discharge and a new registration — full legal work, full fees — and you must pay off any revolving credit secured by the same charge. TD and Tangerine register collateral charges by default. Find out which you have before your renewal, not during it.
There is a second version of the same lock. A readvanceable mortgage — the kind where a HELOC limit rises automatically as you pay the mortgage down — is a combined loan plan, and OSFI's exemption applies only to a stand-alone residential mortgage. So the convenience product may have forfeited the shopping right, and readvanceable mortgages are almost always registered as collateral charges too, which compounds it. The regulator unlocked the door in 2024. Your own paperwork may have locked it again. Ask your broker to confirm your specific structure qualifies before you count on it.
Twenty-one days, and the trap inside them
A federally regulated lender must give you a renewal statement at least 21 days before the renewal date, and the rules require it to state that nothing will be changed to increase your cost of borrowing between that disclosure and the renewal. The same rule means that if you do nothing, you may be renewed automatically into whatever was on the form. FCAC's own advice is to start contacting lenders a few months before the term ends, not when the letter arrives.
