Oaken Financial review 2020  + MORE Apr 25th

According to mortgage industry experts, more than half of Canadians break or renegotiate their mortgage before maturity. The reasons vary and include: finding better interest rates, needing money for renovations, family expansion, moving for work, or kids going off to university.
If you choose to break a closed mortgage before the end of your term, you will pay a penalty. So, when does it make sense to end your mortgage early, and how does the process work?
How Are Mortgage Penalties Assessed?
Mortgage penalties are intended to compensate lenders for the money they’ll lose when you break a mortgage contract early. Most mortgages can be broken, including fixed and variable rate mortgages.
Variable-rate mortgage penalties are generally equal to three months’ interest on your loan.
The penalty for breaking a fixed-rate mortgage, on the other hand, can be significantly higher, sometimes so much so that it may not make financial sense to break the mortgage early simply to refinance.
Fixed-rate mortgage penalties are generally the greater of:

A) three months of interest, or
B) the interest rate differential (IRD)…

Table of contents

Who is Oaken Financial?
Oaken Financial review

Oaken Financial GICs
Oaken Financial’s High-Interest Savings Account

Is Oaken Financial right for me?

There are plenty of options for saving and investing in Canada, whether it’s via high-interest savings accounts, TFSAs, RRSPs, or other types of accounts. To help you decide which financial institution might be a good fit for your needs, we’ve taken a close look at Oaken Financial’s offerings, which are available for both personal and commercial clients. Oaken offers GICs and a high-interest savings account (HISA). Read on for a review of those accounts, and what else Oaken has to offer.
Who is Oaken Financial?
Oaken Financial was launched in 2013, but its parent company, Home Trust, was founded more than 30 years ago, in 1987. You may know of Home Trust because of their mortgage and credit card offerings; Oaken is Home Trust’s consumer deposit business. When you open an account or buy a GIC with Oaken Financial, you can choose to do so with either Home Trust or Home Bank, which is a bank the former bought in 2015…

With ongoing economic uncertainty, temporary layoffs and substantial job losses, many Canadians are working to find flexible solutions to manage financial hardships.
Recent figures from the federal government show more than six million people are receiving the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, with nearly a million more applications in limbo. The Canadian Bankers Association also reported that nearly 600,000 customers are now deferring mortgage payments, proving the financial ramifications to be far-reaching.
According to a survey conducted by Leger, 44% of respondents feel the current COVID-19 crisis has negatively impacted their income.
Highlights of the study:

Fifty-four percent of respondents say the pandemic is hurting their retirement savings and investments.
Twenty-six percent of those surveyed worry they will not be able to pay their bills on time.
Twenty-one percent of respondents will have difficulty paying their mortgage or rent.

Lenders are seeing an increase in borrowing with thousands of Canadians extending their credit limits and hurrying to refinance their mortgages to ease financial burdens or provide an essential safety net…