For many older homeowners, a reverse mortgage is their final major financial decision, one they expect to carry for the rest of their lives. That reality shaped SafeRate, a new product designed to guarantee a fixed interest rate for life.
Canadian fintech company Bloom Financial, one of just a handful of reverse mortgage providers in the country, brought the new product to market earlier this month. Not only is it the first to offer older homeowners a lifetime fixed rate, it also introduces several consumer-focused features that haven’t existed in Canada until now.
“We’ve been in market in Canada for five years now, we’ve had enough time to see a lot of real-life situations unfold working with thousands of clients, and a lot of the features that are inherent to SafeRate come from that real-life experience,” Bloom Financial founder and CEO Ben McCabe told Canadian Mortgage Trends. “We also looked for inspiration from elsewhere, and the way some of this is structured is the gold standard elsewhere, particularly in the UK, which is ahead of the curve in terms of consumer protection.”
The current posted rate for SafeRate is 6.69%, and Bloom says there is some flexibility for strong applications. By comparison, its 5-year fixed rate is about 10 basis points lower, putting the lifetime option at only a modest premium and roughly in the middle of current competitor pricing.
McCabe says many reverse mortgage customers view it as their last major financial transaction, and something they expect to hold for most or all their remaining years.
“When we think about that lifetime commitment from the client, we thought the ability to provide lifetime certainty in terms of what the mortgage growth is going to look like,” he says. “It’s really designed for clients that value the certainty associated with having a growth rate that they can have 100% confidence in for the rest of their lives.”
Additional features
The ability to lock in a lifetime rate is just one of several innovations SafeRate introduces into the Canadian market, McCabe adds.
Unlike other reverse mortgage products, for example, SafeRate allows customers to carry their existing rate to another property.
“If they’re downsizing, they can keep their loan-to-value ratio and if they’re up-sizing they can keep their balance,” McCabe says. “They can always keep the rate, and there’s no repayment fees attached to it.”
SafeRate also provides 100% waivers for those who move into long-term care, twice the industry standard 50%, and features a three-year bereavement repayment waiver following the death of the first spouse, another first in Canada, he says.
Eligibility, costs and key limitations
As with all Bloom equity release products, SafeRate is currently available only to homeowners aged 55 to 95 who have sufficient home equity in an owner-occupied principal residence located in an urban or marketable rural area in Alberta, B.C. or Ontario.
Furthermore, since SafeRate allows customers to lock-in for life, there are steep penalties associated with breaking the contract early, making it a poor fit for those who want to sell and move into a rental in the near future.
Prepayment charges start at 8% in year one and then fall by one percentage point each year until years six to 10, when the fee is equivalent to three months’ interest.
At the same time, McCabe says the product was designed to address each of the primary reasons customers might want out of their contracts early, such as bereavement, downsizing, and moving into long-term care.
“If you are a short-term oriented borrower, if you are thinking you might refinance in a couple of years, if you are thinking that you might sell and rent, then it’s definitely not the product for you,” he says. “It’s really for someone who loves their home, wants to remain in their home, and is looking for a solution so they can age in place.”
At this point, SafeRate is not compatible with Bloom’s prepaid Mastercard product, though McCabe says the company hopes to combine the two next year and will work to make it retroactive for existing customers.
Why it matters for brokers
While the broker channel represents a sizeable portion of Bloom’s business, McCabe acknowledges that some are more comfortable with this product category than others.
As a product suite that is largely removed from the traditional housing market, and in a country with an aging population, McCabe emphasizes the opportunity it provides brokers today and into the future.
“When there’s a boom in traditional mortgages, people focus less on reverse mortgages, and when traditional mortgage activity is low, people will point to reverse mortgages as something that’s continuing to be active,” he says. “In reality, it’s a pretty straight line, and when the regular mortgage industry goes up and down, reverse mortgages remain pretty stable.”
In just its first week, McCabe says SafeRate is already seeing strong demand, adding that he expects to see similar demand for those features that have proven popular in other jurisdictions.
“I think it advances an important new consumer-friendly element in terms of lifetime fixed rates, and I think it advances a number of very important consumer protections that have historically not existed in Canada, but do exist elsewhere.”
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Last modified: November 19, 2025