For many older homeowners, a reverse mortgage is their final big financial decision, one they expect to carry for the rest of their lives. This reality has shaped SafeRate, a new product designed to guarantee a fixed interest rate for life.
Canadian fintech company Bloom Financial, one of the country’s few reverse mortgage providers, brought the new product to market earlier this month. Not only was it the first to offer a lifetime fixed rate to older homeowners, but it also introduced several consumer-focused features that had not existed in Canada until now.
“We’ve been in the Canadian market for five years now, and we’ve had plenty of time to work with thousands of clients and see firsthand many real-life situations, and many of the features inherent in SafeRate come from real-life experience,” said Ben McCabe, founder and CEO of Bloom Financial. Canadian Mortgage Trends. “We also look to other places for inspiration and the way some of them are structured is the gold standard elsewhere, particularly in the UK which is leading the way in consumer protection.”
SafeRate’s current published rate is 6.69%, and Bloom said there is some flexibility for powerful applications. By comparison, its 5-year fixed rate is about 10 basis points lower, and the premium for the lifetime option is only modest, roughly in the middle of current competitor pricing.
McCabe said many reverse mortgage clients view it as their last major financial transaction, and they expect to hold on to it for most or all of the rest of their lives.
“When we think about our customers’ lifetime commitments, we see the ability to provide lifetime certainty in mortgage growth,” he said. “It’s really designed for clients who value certainty about their growth rate, which they can have 100 percent confidence in for the rest of their lives.”
Additional features
McCabe added that the ability to lock in lifetime rates is just one of several innovations SafeRate is bringing to the Canadian market.
For example, unlike other reverse mortgage products, SafeRate allows customers to transfer their existing interest rate to another property.
“If they downsize, they can maintain the loan-to-value ratio, and if they expand, they can maintain balance,” McCabe said. “They can always keep the interest rate the same and charge no repayment fees.”
SafeRate also offers a 100 per cent exemption for those entering long-term care, double the industry standard of 50 per cent, and a three-year bereavement repayment exemption after the death of the first spouse, another first in Canada, he said.
Eligibility, Fees and Key Restrictions
Like all Bloom equity release products, SafeRate is currently only available to homeowners aged 55 to 95 who have sufficient home equity in an owner-occupied primary residence in an urban or marketable rural area in Alberta, British Columbia or Ontario.
Additionally, since SafeRate allows customers to be locked in for life, there are severe penalties for breaking the contract early, making it unsuitable for those looking to sell and move into a rental in the near future.
Prepayment fees start at 8% in the first year and then decrease by one percentage point each year until years six to ten, at which point the fee is equivalent to three months’ interest.
McCabe, meanwhile, said the product was designed to address every major reason a customer might want to break out of a contract early, such as bereavement, downsizing and moving into long-term care.
“If you’re a short-term borrower, if you think you might refinance in a few years, if you think you might sell and rent, then it’s definitely not for you,” he said. “This is really for someone who loves their home, wants to stay in it and is looking for a solution so they can age in place.”
Currently, SafeRate is not compatible with Bloom’s prepaid Mastercard product, although McCabe said the company hopes to integrate the two next year and will work to make it retroactive for existing customers.
Why this matters to brokers
While the broker channel makes up a large portion of Bloom’s business, McCabe acknowledged that some prefer this product category to others.
As a product suite that is largely divorced from the traditional real estate market, and in a country with an aging population, McCabe highlighted the opportunities it offers agents now and in the future.
“When conventional mortgages are booming, there is less focus on reverse mortgages, and when conventional mortgage activity is down, reverse mortgages are thought to continue to be active,” he said. “It’s actually been a pretty straight line, and while the conventional mortgage industry has had its ups and downs, reverse mortgages have remained pretty steady.”
McCabe said SafeRate has already seen strong demand in its first week of launch, adding that he expects similar demand for features that have proven popular in other jurisdictions.
“I think it advances an important new consumer-friendly element in terms of lifetime fixed rates, and I think it advances a lot of very important consumer protections that historically didn’t exist in Canada but do exist elsewhere.”
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Last modified: November 19, 2025
