As you know, it’s been almost two months since the COVID-19 lockdown and various signs are now pointing to the gradual restart of the Canadian economy.

At this juncture, I want to take the opportunity to bring you up to date on where things stand at First National.

Like you, we are still working from home. However, that hasn’t stopped you or the team here at First National from serving Canadian homebuyers in record numbers. In fact, I’m very pleased to announce that with the support of the mortgage broker community, we achieved best ever single family first quarter mortgage origination volumes of $2.8 billion – 55% or $1 billion higher than a year ago.

Every First National office across the country experienced growth, as did our Excalibur program. Given the severe disruption of COVID-19, I am very proud of these results and proud of you as our valued partner for making our performance possible.

As testament to the fact that activity levels did not drop after we collectively retreated to our home offices, we underwrote a record volume of new commitments in March that we will fund in the upcoming months.

Looking ahead, we are 100% committed to being and doing our best for you. In this environment, being the best means living up to our pledge to respond quickly to all mortgage requests, underwriting deals on time with the help of our always secure MERLIN system and more generally, being a tireless advocate of the mortgage broker channel.

These are challenging times but the adjustments you and First National have made to succeed in this ‘new normal’ environment are paying off.

Thank you for your ongoing support and confidence in First National.

Scott McKenzie
Senior Vice President, Residential Mortgages