The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition that the share of mortgages with ultralong amortization periods has rapidly increased to about 30 per cent of home loans at some of Canada's biggest banks, another sign borrowers are struggling with higher interest rates. The Globe's Rachelle Younglai and James Bradshaw write that at Bank of Montreal, the proportion of residential mortgages with amortization periods longer than 30 years reached 31.3 per cent last month. At CIBC, the share was 30 per cent and at Royal Bank of Canada it was 27 per cent, according to the lenders' latest quarterly results, released during the week. That is up from the end of July, when 30-year-plus mortgages accounted for one quarter of each of the three banks' residential mortgage portfolios. The July numbers were a significant increase from the end of April, when those loans made up 10.6 per cent of BMO's portfolio and 12 per cent of mortgages at RBC and CIBC. In October, 2021, before the country's central bank started hiking interest rates, the three banks had no mortgages with amortization periods above 30 years, according to their disclosures. The situation is hard on variable-rate mortgage holders with fixed monthly payments.