When Canadians think of bank failures, they probably think of people lining up in front of a bank anxious to get their money out. The last time a Canadian bank went under, however, the Spice Girls had a number one hit on the radio, and today we have online banking.
Fortunately, today, surveys show that Canadians are confident that the deposits in financial institutions are safe. And there’s a good reason for that. For more than 50 years, Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC) has protected eligible deposits at federally regulated banks, loan companies and other member institutions. So even when a bank has failed, for over five decades, no one has lost a single dollar protected under CDIC.
In fact, during the financial crisis of 2008, while other leading nations struggled to maintain confidence in their banking systems because of failures of long-standing financial titans, Canadians remained confident that the money they had in the bank would be there when they needed it.