Beneath the mortgage book sits a second layer of household credit — auto loans, credit cards, and instalment loans — and it is where repayment stress is showing first. On the Bank of Canada's rates of loans in arrears (%), by product type, all three categories are now at or near the highest readings in the available series. Instalment loans are the most distressed, having nearly tripled from 0.92% in late 2015 to 2.64% in late 2025; auto and credit-card arrears each sit at series highs.
Arrears rates are the upstream signal of household-credit distress. A loan counted as 90+ days past due is well down the path toward charge-off or repossession, but the rate itself moves before those terminal events register — which is why it is the cleaner gauge of stress than any count of repossessions, of which Canada in any case keeps no national tally. The Bank of Canada's product-type series, built on TransUnion's loan-level data, lets us watch three distinct consumer-credit markets move at once. Through the 2024–2026 period they are moving in the same direction: up. The companion Mortgage delinquencies and Household debt metrics cover the secured and aggregate-leverage sides of the same household balance sheet.
Each product type is shown on its own scale so its trajectory reads clearly: the auto-loan plateau of the last year, the deep pandemic V and full recovery in credit cards, and the relentless, accelerating climb in instalment loans. The levels are not comparable across panels — instalment-loan arrears run roughly four times the auto-loan rate — but the direction is shared: all three are at or near their highest readings in the series.
Why these three move differently. Auto and instalment loans are amortising, secured-or-structured debt with fixed payments; credit cards are revolving and the most sensitive to short-term cash-flow squeezes, which is why their arrears rate swung most sharply through the pandemic. Instalment loans — a category that includes unsecured personal loans and point-of-sale financing — carry the highest arrears rate throughout and are the clearest expression of strain among lower-buffer borrowers.
Source: Bank of Canada Financial Stability Indicators — Household credit performance (TransUnion & BoC calculations). Each panel is scaled to its own range; the vertical axes are not comparable across panels. Quarterly, 2015-Q4 to 2025-Q4.
Reading the shapes. Auto loans rose steadily off their 2021 trough but have gone flat at ~0.67% for three quarters — a plateau, not yet a turn. Credit cards trace the cleanest cycle: a pre-pandemic drift up to 0.75%, a collapse to ~0.45% as payment-deferral programs and stimulus suppressed defaults in 2020–21, then a full recovery to a 0.78% high. Instalment loans show no cycle at all — just a long climb that has steepened since 2023, with no sign of levelling.
Instalment-loan arrears have risen from 0.92% in 2015-Q4 to 2.64% in 2025-Q4 — nearly a tripling — and the climb has steepened since 2023, with no sign of a plateau. They run roughly four times the auto-loan rate throughout the series.
At 0.67% in 2025-Q4 (just below the 0.68% series peak), auto arrears are up ~72% from their 0.39% pandemic low in 2021. The rate has held flat at ~0.67% for the last three quarters — a plateau rather than a clear turn.
Card arrears fell sharply to ~0.45% in 2020–21 as deferrals and stimulus suppressed defaults, then recovered fully to a series-high 0.78% by 2025-Q4. The 2019-Q4 → 2020 leg coincides with a reporting shift and is read with mild caution.
Despite different levels and shapes, every product type ends the series at or near its highest reading. The breadth of the move — secured auto, revolving cards, and unsecured instalment debt rising together — is what makes the signal load-bearing for the financing pillar.