We recently renewed our mortgage... and RBC was the LEAST competitive, even though we've consistently had good credit ratings.

We eventually went with CIBC, as that bank seemed to be happy to have us as customers, and were much more responsive in the sense of making us feel welcome (as opposed to the RBC lady who seemed to think she was doing us some sort of favour by allowing us to have a mortgage with them).  I'm not trying to single out CIBC, other institutions were equally more responsive than RBC, including National, PC-Financial and one other credit union that we looked at... it's just that CIBC worked best for us.

Long story short, while I suspect the RBC spin-brigade will try to sell us some malarkey that they are somehow being "responsible" by raising rates... nevertheless, my guess is that RBC likely NEEDED to raise its rates to cover for lost customers - because if our experience is any example, RBC has undoubtedly suffered from some serious lost business.  Enough said!