Canada: Term Loan Facility

As the Global Financial Crisis deepened into late 2008, liquidity continued to deteriorate in Canadian credit markets. Canadian financial institutions curtailed their lending, which increased funding costs and reduced market-wide liquidity. In response, the Bank of Canada (BoC) took extraordinary measures to provide liquidity to financial market participants and improve credit conditions. On November 12, 2008, the BoC established the Term Loan Facility (TLF) to extend credit at a penalty rate for terms of approximately one month. The TLF was available to 14 major banks that were direct participants in Canada's payments system, the Large Value Transfer System. Participants could pledge their relatively illiquid, CAD-denominated non-mortgage loan portfolios in exchange for central bank funding. The BoC established two other liquidity facilities during this period, the regular Term PRA and the Term PRA for Private Sector Instruments. The BoC conducted 50 auctions through the TLF, of which just seven were subscribed. In total, it auctioned CAD 5.2 billion (USD 4.2 billion) in funding. The limited participation in the TLF may suggest that Canadian financial institutions were able to obtain short-term funding from other, more cost-effective sources. The TLF expired on October 28, 2009, along with the Term PRA for Private Sector Instruments.