AI Analysis: Credit assets of the financial corporations sector

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 36100641 tracks six credit asset categories held by Canada's financial corporations sector across 36+ years of monthly data (January 1990 to February 2026), revealing massive growth from a minimum of $151M to a peak of $4.7 trillion CAD. Total credit assets dominate the dataset with a median of $1.74 trillion, driven primarily by mortgage loans and non-mortgage loans, while 105 statistical outliers point to periods of extreme market disruption. The data's right-skewed distribution — where the overall mean of $673B exceeds the median of $398B by nearly 70% — underscores the compounding scale of Canada's financial sector over the period.

Key Findings

• Total credit assets of the financial corporations sector grew from a minimum of $607B to a maximum of $4.7 trillion CAD, with a median of $1.74 trillion across the full 1990–2026 period.
• Mortgage loans are the largest sub-component with a median of $944B and a maximum of $2.86 trillion, making them the single biggest driver of credit asset growth.
• The overall dataset mean of $673B is nearly 70% higher than the median of $398B, confirming a strongly right-skewed distribution driven by high-value observations in recent years.
• 105 outliers were detected using a conservative 3×IQR threshold across six categories, likely clustering around major economic events such as the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Financial vehicle corporations engaged in securitization represent the smallest and most volatile category, with a median of only $23B but a maximum of $355B, indicating niche but highly variable activity.
• Chartered banks show the widest absolute spread among sub-components, ranging from $93B to $2 trillion, reflecting their increasingly dominant role in Canadian credit markets over 35 years.
• Non-bank financial corporations occupy a mid-tier position with a median of $276B and a maximum of $854B, serving as a meaningful but secondary contributor to total sector credit assets.