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By Armina Ligaya and Barbara Shecter

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More than two weeks before the public would get the first inkling of problems at Home Capital Group Inc., the alternative mortgage lender found itself under heightened scrutiny — and not for the first time — from Canada’s top banking regulator.

In a letter dated June 23, 2015 and addressed to the company’s founder and then chief executive Gerald Soloway, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions detailed the concerns that were building around the company.

“Significant corporate governance issues, AML (anti-money laundering) concerns and internal control breakdowns pertaining to practices in underwriting residential mortgages” had been identified at Home Trust, Home Capital’s fully owned subsidiary, OSFI wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Financial Post.

And the regulator was taking action.

OSFI said it was raising the lender’s intervention rating from “Stage 0” to “Stage 1,” or “early warning,” putting the company back into a process of enhanced regulatory oversight known as staging. The letter also laid out a series of measures, including imposing stricter capital controls and ordering a third-party review of management and the company’s corporate governance structure.