The gap between insured and uninsured mortgage originations is now wider than the Grand Canyon. And it just keeps expanding, as the BoC's latest data show (chart below).

The government seems blissfully content to let the insured market wither.

The number of mortgages on CMHC's books, for example, is now below 1.5 million for the first time in over a decade. That's down one million in just six years. (There are roughly seven million mortgages in Canada total.)

Meanwhile, despite 11 years of rising prices that shut out first-time buyers in major cities, the government refuses to increase the default insurance value limit above $1 million. That's despite its 2021 pledge to do so.

That, and the uninsurability of refinances and rental properties, almost guarantee the insured-uninsured gap keeps widening.

But who pays?

The repercussions of the government's insured-mortgage pullback are many:

Neil Patel is an SEO Jedi and content wizard. The Wall Street Journal calls him one of the world's top marketing influencers.

Patel consults for companies like Google, Facebook and Intuit and has (at @neilpatel) over 1.1 million YouTube subscribers.

He recently spoke with us about a little invention called ChatGPT — and how it should and should not be used for mortgage content marketing.

The questions he answered have been on our minds for months, including:

• How should mortgage professionals harness AI content at this early stage?
• How much would creating 100+ pages of ChatGPT-generated mortgage content benefit a typical broker or lender?
• Will ChatGPT replace mortgage advisors?
• Will ChatGPT replace search engines?
• And more...

If cultivating online mortgage traffic is your thing, you'll likely find the video and tips that follow 12 minutes well spent.

Headline inflation was a welcome surprise this morning, landing at 2.8% versus the 3% consensus. Just 12 months ago, it was hitting horrifying 4-decade highs of 8.1%

Today's average core reading was less impressive, however. It eased only 1/10th to 3.8%. Until core descends into the BoC's 1-3% control range, it'll be restless nights for team Macklem at the BoC.

The good news:

• Headline inflation typically leads core lower
• CPI in the 2% range should take inflation expectations down another notch

There's no shortage of vanilla lenders in this industry. We're talking primarily about non-banks that compete mainly in the insured/insurable space and offer similar products and service levels as their rivals.

Becoming un-vanilla isn't easy when you're a non-bank forced to rely on securitization and third-party banks for funding—like all your competitors. We get that. But the biggest broker-channel lender in North America (perhaps the largest lender on earth, as measured by originations) is also a securitizing lender. And it's found multiple ways to differentiate itself.

We're about to examine one such way. It's a strategy—in the age of YouTube and social media—that makes you wonder why more Canadian broker lenders don't do the same.

As reported Tuesday, Canada's bank regulator plans two changes to the capital requirements of banks and default insurers. They take effect November 1 and could limit the availability of fixed-payment variable-rate mortgages at banks.

According to industry executives we interviewed last week, here's the likely outcome.