Financial Resilience Institute

Nov 28 · 5 mins

Financial Resilience Institute releases its October 2024 Index Release measuring households’ financial resilience in Canada

 

The Institute’s October 2024 Seymour Financial Resilience Index ® reveals a Canada Mean Financial Resilience Score of 52.23, 1.45 Index points higher than in October 2023 with 75% of households financially vulnerable on some level

 

Vancouver, B.C, November 2024 – Financial Resilience Institute has released its latest insights from its peer-reviewed October 2024 Financial Resilience Index model, the first Index of its kind in the world, along with its its 16 th longitudinal independent Financial Well-Being study.

The October 2024 Index underscores persistent financial vulnerability among Canadian households across all household income demographics. Overall at the national level, Canadians are just ‘Approaching Resilience’.

Key Findings from the October 2024 Index Release:

  • Increase in ‘Financially Resilient’ households: The proportion of ‘Financially Resilient’ households has increased from 20% in October 2023 to 25% in October 2024. However, this remains below the 31% seen in June 2021 during the pandemic.
  • Continuing Inequities: While 86% of ‘Financially Resilient’ households report household savings rates of 6% or more of their income as of October 2024, 88% of ‘Extremely Vulnerable’ households have a negative or zero household savings rate. With the high cost of living and other challenges, there has been an increase in ‘Extremely Vulnerable’ households drawing down on their savings from 28% to 39% between June 2021 and October 2024.
  • Declining Liquid Savings Buffers compared to 2017: As of October 2024, 50.7% of households have a liquid savings buffer of three months or more, down from 63.5% in 2017. Just 23% of households report liquid savings buffers of less than three weeks, with this the case for 88% of ‘Extremely Vulnerable’ households as of October 2024.
  • Differences by Generation: Baby Boomers have shown the greatest improvements in their financial resilience scores over the past year, while younger generations’ mean financial resilience scores have remained stagnant or declined.
  • Rising Housing Affordability Challenges: 55% of Canadians reported that housing affordability is a problem for them personally, with this figure rising to 86% among ‘Extremely Vulnerable’ households with a financial resilience score of 0 to 30.

The October 2024 Index data and insights on the challenged financial well-being of Canadians validate the criticality of Policymakers, Financial Institutions, Employers and other organizations doing their part to help improve the financial resilience, financial health and financial well-being of more families. Eloise Duncan, CEO and Founder of the Institute, states, “While we’re encouraged by the closing financial resilience gender gap, financial vulnerability remains mainstream problem. Our shows that more traditional metrics like peoples’ net worth

don’t tell the full story. We believe more targeted support is needed by Policymakers and others, in particular for more financially vulnerable populations. These include younger Canadians, renters, Indigenous Canadians and others.” The Institute is committed to providing much-needed financial health, financial resilience and financial well-being impact measurement to the ecosystem, while providing data, benchmarking, programming and solutions to support evidence-based policies, programs, and innovations that help build a more resilient and inclusive Canada.

To explore the findings and implications of the top-line October 2024 Index release, visit https://www.finresilienceinstitute.org/index-releases-and-reports/

 

About Financial Resilience Institute

Financial Resilience Institute is a non-profit organization and leading independent authority on financial well-being in Canada globally. It measures and tracks household financial resilience, financial health and financial well-being through its longitudinal Financial Well-Being Studies and peer-reviewed Financial Resilience Index Model [1] . The Institute recently released its free financial resilience score tool and bank of resources for Canadians, and a new publicly available Financial Well-Being Model and Score. The Institute partners with financial institutions, policymakers, employers and innovators to develop and implement evidence-based solutions that improve financial resilience, health and well-being for all.

[1] The Seymour Financial Resilience Index ® measures household financial resilience, i.e. your ability to get through financial hardship, stressors and shocks as a result of unplanned life events, across nine behavioural sentiment and resilience indicators. Households are scored from 0 to 100, with ‘Extremely Vulnerable’ households having a financial resilience score of 0 to 30, ‘Financially Vulnerable’ a score of ’30.01 to 50, ‘Approaching Resilience’ a score of 50.01 to 70 and ‘Financially Resilient’ a score of 70.01 to 100. The first Index of its kind in the world, it measures household financial resilience in Canada at the national, provincial, and individual levels, backed by over nine years of data and with a pre-pandemic baseline of February 2020. Index data is updated every four months and is based on a representative sample of the population by household income, age, gender and province, with 2525 adult decision makers as of October 2024, 6218 adult decision makers as of June 2024 and 5006 adult decision makers as of October 2023. The Index has been peer- reviewed by Statistics Canada, UN-PRB, C.D. Howe Institute, Haver Analytics, Vancity, Co-operators, Coast Capital, Prosper Canada and many other organizations using it. It is complemented by the Financial Well-Being studies instrument (2017-2024) and has applications in other countries. More information about the Index indicators, scoring model and development methodology are available at: https://www.finresilienceinstitute.org/indicators-and-scoring-model/