On March 19th, 2012, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Canada (OSFI) published draft guide B-20 – Residential Mortgage Underwriting Practices and Procedures. They had asked for comments and suggestions from the industry and are now in the process of preparing final mortgage guidelines to be released in the near future. The following provides a brief description of OSFI’s decisions on a few key issues which will be reflected in the final guideline to Federally Regulated Financial Institutions (FRFI). Re-qualification at renewal: unlike what was originally suggested, it appears that clients will not have to re-qualify for their mortgage at renewal. Lenders have used repayment history as the main determining factor for qualification at renewal and it is anticipated that this will remain. Lenders will however be expected to “refresh the borrowers’ credit metrics periodically (not necessarily at renewal) so that [they] can effectively evaluate their credit risk. ...