Canada’s largest banks could raise their dividends as much as 25 per cent once regulators allow them to increase their payouts, according to an investment firm that focuses on financial stocks.

The dividend increase of 20 per cent to 25 per cent could happen even if the banks’ earnings growth stalls, Toronto-based Hamilton Capital Partners said in a note Tuesday. The hikes could be even larger if bank executives want to slow the growth in their capital levels, the firm said.

Canada’s largest banks socked away record amounts of capital during the pandemic to protect against a wave of defaults that never occurred, while also seeing core earnings measures rise.

At the same time, Canada’s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions has prevented them from buying back shares or increasing dividends since March 2020, prompting capital to pile up even more. Canada’s lenders are now “among the best-capitalized banks globally” and are sitting on $21.4 billion (US$17.3 billion) in allowances against loans that are still in good standing, according to Hamilton Capital, which was co-founded by former National Bank of Canada analyst Rob Wessel…read more.

Coinbase is getting into NFTs.

The cryptocurrency exchange said Tuesday it plans to launch a marketplace that lets users mint, collect and trade NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. Users can sign up to a waitlist for early access to the feature, the company said.

NFTs are one-of-a-kind digital assets designed to represent ownership of online items like rare art or collectible trading cards. They aren’t fungible, meaning you can’t exchange one NFT for another like you could with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Sales of such tokens have boomed this year. The NFT market topped $10 billion in transaction volume in the third quarter of 2021, according to DappRadar, a company that tracks data on crypto-based applications…read more.