Toronto-Dominion Bank has become the last of Canada’s legacy covered bond issuers to have a legislative programme registered with the Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation, paving the way for the bank to sell its first benchmark in over two years.

TD is the seventh Canadian issuer to have a covered bond programme registered with CMHC, which administers Canada’s legislative covered bond regime. The programme entered CMHC’s registry yesterday (Wednesday).

Canadian banks have been active in the benchmark covered bond market following CMHC registration of their legislative programmes, prioritising the euro market from which they had been long absent. Five euro deals for a total of Eu5bn have been launched so far this year and more supply from the country is expected, with several issuers having been on the road recently.

TD last issued a benchmark covered bond in March 2012, a US$3bn (C$3.22bn, Eu2.21bn) five year that came at 70.6bp over US Treasuries. The last Canadian benchmark issue was a Eu1bn five year deal for Royal Bank of Canada priced at 7bp over mid-swaps on 12 June.