CIBC's planned sale of mortgage broker lender looks dead

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce appears to be giving up on its plan to sell its business that originates mortgages via brokers.

CIBC put its FirstLine business, once the biggest lender in the broker market in Canada, up for sale earlier this year. But a buyer hasn't been found and now the Canadianmortgagetrends.com blog says that CIBC has instead decided to just put the business in runoff mode by not accepting new applications.

CIBC decided to sell the business after concluding that it wanted to bring mortgages back under the CIBC banner to try to drive more ancillary business from customers, such as credit cards, and the like.

CIBC told the web site that "today's announcement is aligned to CIBC's strategy to emphasize those channels where we have a greater opportunity to meet more of our clients' needs, and refocus our mortgage activities on our CIBC branded channels moving forward."