Biannual Survey of Suppliers of Business Financing, first half 2014

Released: 2014-11-14

Debt outstanding

The total credit outstanding held by businesses in Canada increased in the first half of 2014. The largest borrowers, those with authorization levels of $5 million or more, were mainly responsible for the growth.

Commercial suppliers of financing, including banks, credit unions and caisses populaires, finance companies as well as insurance companies, reported that their clients owed them approximately $625.4 billion in the first half of 2014, up 3.9% over the second half of 2013.

Chart 1 
Total credit outstanding

Outstanding debt among the largest businesses, those with authorization levels of $5 million or more, increased 4.3% to $406.2 billion.

Outstanding debt of borrowers with authorization levels less than $1 million, generally the smaller companies, rose 2.6% to $94.6 billion in the first half of 2014.

Those with authorizations between $1 million and $4.9 million had outstanding debt of $124.6 billion, up 3.6%.

Banks continued to be the major supplier of debt financing to businesses in Canada. By the end of June of 2014, their outstanding debt financing was $351 billion, up 4.0% over December 2013. Banks have increased their market share comparatively more than any other category since the first half of 2011, rising from 52.5% to 56.1% of the loans to businesses in Canada.

The "other banks" category posted the largest growth of all suppliers in the first half of 2014, with their outstanding debt rising 5.4% to $87.1 billion. This represented 13.9% of the business borrowing market by the end of June 2014.

Disbursements

Total disbursements rose 1.8% from the second half of 2013 to $79.5 billion in the first half of 2014, a seventh consecutive increase.

Chart 2 
Total disbursements

The largest period-over-period growth was for loans of $5 million or more, which rose 3.6% to $53.5 billion. They were followed by loans of $50,000 to $99,999, up 1.1% to $735 million. All other loan size categories were down compared with the second half of 2013.

Banks were the largest contributor to the total disbursements growth, up 2.3% or $835 million from the second half of 2013 to $37.5 billion. This was followed by other banks (primarily, but not exclusively, foreign-owned banks), up 6.5% or $1.1 billion to $18.3 billion. Finance companies reported the largest period-over-period growth in total disbursements, up 10.4% to $9.4 billion.

Insurance companies and portfolio managers (-11.2%) reported the largest decrease in disbursements, followed by credit unions and caisses populaires (-7.8%).

Contact information

For more information, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca).

To enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Robert Fair (613-951-0068; robert.fair@statcan.gc.ca) or Philippe Marceau (613-951-4390; philippe.marceau@statcan.gc.ca), Industrial Organization and Finance Division.