MLN NewsStream

The Competition Bureau announced Friday that it "has obtained a court order to advance a civil investigation into alleged anti-competitive conduct by Dominion Lending Centres Inc. (DLC)."

"This includes examining certain practices that limit mortgage brokers' ability to use the technology solutions of their choice," its press release said.

The action relates mainly to DLC charging mortgage agents $200 per file to use specific competing mortgage submission platforms (a.k.a. "Point of Sale" systems). POS competitor Finmo reportedly initiated the complaint. Finmo goes head to head with DLC Group's wholly-owned Newton platform.

• Rate alert: Be careful with floating those rate holds on fixed mortgages. The 4-year swap—a preferred fixed-rate funding gauge (chart above)—closed at over a 2-month high today. This is a made-in-Canada move. Our 5-year yield is up 30 bps this week versus just 14 bps for the U.S. 5-year. Thank you, CPI.  
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Last spring, MLN broke the news that Tangerine had entered the broker market. Since then, things haven't evolved quite as planned.

Macklem and company won't love this number. Canadian inflation has surprised to the upside at 4.4% in April. The market expected 4.1%.