Canadians are “seriously concerned” about the state of the economy heading into 2024, a recent report from Dye & Durham found.
Dye & Durham’s latest quarterly Canadian Pulse report revealed that fewer than one quarter of Canadians feel better off financially this year compared with last year, while nearly half say they’re faring worse.
Due to persistent inflation across the nation, Canadians are spending more this year on critical categories of consumption such as groceries, gas, insurance, and rent, the report found.
This downward sentiment is reflected in an overall pessimism about the country’s economy at large, with 59% of Canadians anticipating a recession in 2024—a figure that is up notably from the prior quarter.
Meanwhile, nearly one-third of Canadians are convinced we are already in a recession.
And yet despite recession-like headwinds, a majority of Canadians still expect housing prices to rise in 2024, the survey found, fuelled by sustained demand for homeownership and the highest per capita immigration rate in the world.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom, believes Martha Vallance, who serves as chief operating officer for Dye & Durham.
“Inflation is cooling and interest rates are stabilizing,” she posits, “and with that Canadians are telling us that they have renewed optimism in the outlook for their housing plans.”
According to Valance, “It appears that many prospective homebuyers are growing tired of trying to time the market, and pent-up demand could lead to a long-awaited volume rebound for lawyers, realtors, and all those that serve real estate interests across the country in 2024.”
Vallance is referring to a new generation of service providers cropping up across Canada’s financial and real estate sectors.
Embracing modern technology, fintech and prop-tech service providers today leverage artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and more to deliver digital-forward experiences that match the evolving demands of Canadians.
Dye & Durham’s Pulse report found that tech already plays an important role in the day-to-day professional life of nearly 90% of employed Canadians.
“It is evident that people are benefiting from the use of technology and expect the same level of convenience and efficiency from the services they receive,” the report reads.
For example, 45% of Canadians reckon that lawyers and notaries would benefit from incorporating more technology into the services they provide, the report found.
“The role that technology plays in service delivery has moved beyond that of an enabler and an equalizer,” says David Nash, chief of product for Dye & Durham. “It has become an expectation for Canadian consumers.”
Skilled providers like notaries and lawyers “that find ways to leverage technology to remove friction and improve service delivery will stand out from the pack, building lasting customer preference that will improve their bottom line,” he believes.
It’s a step toward what Mastercard has called the “Next Economy,” a reimagined system of value exchange built on emerging technologies such as tokenization, cloud computing, and AI.
Overall, Canadians are most interested in financial and real estate service providers adopting tech when it guarantees superior accuracy or outcomes, and when the tech reduces costs, the Pulse report found.
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