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Over the last 30 years, the business mix of banks in Canada has changed significantly. Progress in information-processing technology, legislative changes, and market forces have combined to blur the traditional distinctions between banks and other financial institutions and have allowed banks to offer a much wider range of products and services. In this article, the author reviews the expansion of bank lending to households over this period and their recent movement into personal wealth management. While these trends were facilitated by revisions to legislation, they also reflected the changing needs of the "baby boom" generation, first as home-buyers and, more recently, as middle-aged investors. On the commercial and corporate side, banks reacted to the rapid expansion of securities markets (and to the reduced demand for intermediation by both lenders/depositors and borrowers) by moving into investment banking, after legislative changes opened this business to them in the late 1980s. They also used their expertise in credit assessment and risk management to provide credit guarantees and to act as counterparties and intermediaries in derivatives markets. Notable in this broadening of bank activities has been their more recent entry into the trust, mutual fund, and retail brokerage business. The banks have also made preliminary forays into insurance. The expansion of off-balance-sheet activities has made fee income an increasingly important part of bank earnings. The article also looks at the emerging tools and techniques that will most likely transform the structure of banking in the future.

Governor Mark Carney with Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty, Mr. Paul G. Smith, Chairman of the Board at VIA Rail Canada and Canadian Space Agency Astronaut Chris Hadfield, Commander of the International Space Station (by satellite), unveil the final two notes of the new Polymer bank note series.

Systemically important payments systems are systems that, because of the size or the nature of the payments they process, could trigger or transmit serious shocks across domestic or international financial systems if they were insufficiently protected against risk. This article describes the overall framework of core principles developed for the design, operation, and oversight of such payments systems. The article reviews the role of the task force established to develop the core principles and examines the core principles themselves. It also examines the role of central banks in overseeing major payments systems and in applying the core principles to them. The focus is on the Bank of Canada's oversight responsibilities under the Payment Clearing and Settlement Act and on Canada's systemically important payments system—the LVTS.

Learn about the mandate and individual members of the Indigenous Advisory Circle.

The Bank of Canada today announced the first two fellowship awards for 2003 under its Fellowship Program launched late last year.

This paper studies the growth of online retail over the period 1999–2012, using confidential firm-product-level data for Canada. The revenue of online retailers is decomposed into the contributions of product scope (the number of product categories) and product scale (average revenue per product category).

This document provides a summary of consultation results on enhancements to the Canadian Overnight Repo Rate Average.

Deputy Governor Lynn Patterson discusses proposed changes to the Bank’s financial market operations.

Two major issues dominate the analysis and policy discussion in this Monetary Policy Report: the nature and extent of the global economic slowdown that began late last year and the consequences of the terrorist attacks in the United States.

We update the Bank of Canada’s credit rating methodology for sovereigns, including our approach to assessing their fiscal position and monetary policy flexibility. We also explicitly consider climate-related factors.