Cayman Islands Mortgages Compared: What Butterfield, Cayman National, RBC, Scotiabank, CIBC and PROVEN Publish (2026)

Cayman Islands banks publish their maximum loan-to-value ratios and terms for residential mortgages, and almost none of them publish a rate. Loan-to-value runs from 80% at RBC to 95% for Caymanians at Cayman National; amortisation from 30 years to 40; rates are variable or fixed, set off the US prime rate, and negotiated on the file. This page compares what the six retail banks say on their own pages, as read on 2 September 2026, with the page linked for each, and explains the pieces that sit around the rate: stamp duty on the charge, the bank's fees, the insurance the bank requires, and how the repayments behave. The mortgage calculator models the schedule; the closing-costs calculator puts the loan into the completion-day cash flow.

The comparison

Bank	Maximum financing	Term	Published rate	Published fees and conditions
Butterfield	Up to 85% of the lower of price and appraised value; 65% on investment property (20-year term); 70% on raw land (10 years)	Up to 30 years	Not published; fixed or variable	CI$200 administration fee; prepayment fee of up to three months' interest on fixed-rate loans
Cayman National	Up to 95% for Caymanians and status holders; up to 90% for work-permit holders	Up to 40 years (Caymanians), 30 years (work-permit holders), not beyond retirement	Not published; "variable or fixed and negotiable based on risk factors"	0.50% commitment fee; life insurance and fire-and-hurricane insurance required
RBC Royal Bank	Up to 80% (20% minimum down payment) for resident owner-occupiers	Up to 30 years, not beyond retirement age	Not published	Comprehensive homeowners' policy and life insurance for not less than the mortgage amount, assigned to the bank
Scotiabank	"As little as 10% down"	Up to 30 years	"As low as 6.50%" (no date shown)	1% application fee; 1% commitment fee, minimum CI$250; CI$150 renewal fee; prepayment fee of 90 days' interest above the annual allowance; mortgage insurance mandatory
CIBC Caribbean	Not published on current pages	Up to 30 years; up to 35 for qualifying first-time buyers	Not published	No prepayment penalty on variable-rate loans
PROVEN Bank (formerly Fidelity)	Up to 90%	Up to 35 years or age 65, whichever comes first	Not published	"Competitive loan set-up fees"

Two gaps in the table are deliberate. Only Scotiabank publishes a number for the rate, and it is a floor with no effective date; Cayman National describes its rate as negotiable, Butterfield offers fixed or variable options, and RBC, CIBC and PROVEN publish no rate wording. And none of the six publishes non-resident terms in machine-readable form: RBC has a non-resident US-dollar mortgage page whose content could not be read at the time of research, and the brokerage summaries that do give non-resident figures (ERA Cayman: up to about 70% and 20 years; RE/MAX: 35% deposit and 15 years) are not bank publications. A non-resident buyer has to ask each bank directly. This table is refreshed quarterly as part of the site's statute-review ritual; the date in the opening paragraph is the date it was last read.

How the rate is set

Cayman Resident's January 2026 mortgage guide describes the mechanism: "most Cayman banks offer mortgages with rates tied to the KYD and USD prime rate, which typically follows the US Federal Reserve 'New York Prime Rate'", with banks charging "between 1% and 3% above the prime rate, giving the lower percentage rate to those with the greater deposit". Property Cayman's guide puts the margin for a primary residence at "Prime Rate plus 0.5% to 1%". The Wall Street Journal prime rate stood at 6.75% on 1 September 2026, down from 7.5% a year earlier (Bankrate). Scotiabank's published floor of 6.50% sits slightly below that prime figure.

Because the rate is prime plus a margin, a variable-rate Cayman mortgage moves when the US Federal Reserve moves. The mortgage calculator models this directly: it accrues interest daily from the deal date and lets the reader add rate changes with an announcement date and the date the bank applies them, then recalculates the schedule from the effective date. A quarter-point change on a CI$500,000 balance is roughly CI$104 a month in interest at the outset; the calculator gives the exact figure for a given balance and remaining term.

Fixed or variable

Butterfield and Cayman National both offer fixed and variable options. The published trade-off is in the fees: Butterfield charges a prepayment fee of up to three months' interest on fixed-rate loans, CIBC's "no prepayment penalty" is stated not to apply to fixed-rate products, and Scotiabank's schedule charges 90 days' interest on prepayments above an annual allowance. A borrower who expects to sell or refinance inside the fixed period pays for the certainty twice, once in the rate and once at exit.

What sits around the rate

Stamp duty on the charge

The mortgage attracts its own duty under the Schedule to the Stamp Duty Act (2019 Revision): 1% of the sum secured where it is CI$300,000 or less, 1.5% where it is more, on the whole amount. The 2025 concession Regulations amended only the conveyance head, so there is no first-time-buyer relief on mortgage duty; none was found in the Regulations, the Government's February 2025 release, or any of the bank or brokerage pages reviewed. A CI$500,000 loan carries CI$7,500 of duty, collected at drawdown. The stamp duty spoke covers the transfer side.

Bank fees

Where published, the fees are a commitment fee (Cayman National 0.50%; Scotiabank 1% with a CI$250 minimum), an application or administration fee (Scotiabank 1%; Butterfield CI$200), and renewal, late-payment and prepayment fees per the bank's schedule. Cayman Resident's summary that banks "charge a commitment fee of up to 1% of the loan amount" matches the published range. The closing-costs calculator carries a commitment-fee rate and a document fee as inputs.

Insurance

RBC and Cayman National require two policies: a homeowners' policy with hurricane cover, collaterally assigned to the bank, and life insurance for at least the mortgage amount; Scotiabank lists mortgage insurance as mandatory and credit life insurance as optional. Cayman First's and Island Heritage's home-insurance pages describe hurricane, cyclone, tornado and windstorm cover with a separate catastrophe deductible (Cayman First: 3% of the building sum insured, minimum CI$500). Premiums are not published by the insurers; a brokerage estimate (ERA Cayman) of 1% to 2% of value a year for beachfront and 1% to 1.5% inland is an indication only. Insurance premiums also attract stamp duty of CI$12 plus 2% of the premium on policies covering immovable property (Cayman Resident, July 2026).

Valuation

The bank lends against the lower of price and appraised value (Butterfield's wording), so the valuation caps the loan. Published cost indications run from about CI$400 (Provenance Properties) to about CI$700 (Cayman Resident). The charge itself is prepared by the buyer's attorney, stamped with the transfer and registered at the Land Registry for a CI$50 fee; the buying-process spoke places it in the sequence.

Who qualifies for what

Cayman National is the only bank to publish a split by status on its product page: 95% and 40 years for Caymanians and status holders, 90% and 30 years for work-permit holders. Butterfield, answering questions for Property Cayman, said its "lending policy is the same for Caymanians, PR Status holders, RERC and work permit holders", with non-residents facing "a higher down payment and likely a shorter repayment term". Every bank caps the term at retirement age. RE/MAX's summary of the market as a whole, which is a brokerage view rather than a bank tariff, gives deposits of 5% to 10% for locals, up to 20% for other residents and 35% for foreign investors, with terms of 30, 20 and 15 years respectively.

A work-permit holder's mortgage runs alongside the immigration timeline. The nine-year term limit under section 66(1) of the Immigration (Transition) Act does not shorten a 30-year mortgage, but a bank is entitled to ask how the borrower expects to remain in the Islands; the roll-over calculator gives the eight-year permanent-residence date and the nine-year date from a permit start date.

Reading the repayments

The mortgage calculator takes the loan amount, the valuation (for loan-to-value), the annual rate, the term in months and the deal date, and produces a schedule with daily interest accrual, so a payment date that falls on a weekend or a month of 31 days shows its true interest. It then lets the reader stack rate changes. For a CI$500,000 loan over 25 years at 7.25%, the opening payment is about CI$3,614 a month; the same loan at 6.50% is about CI$3,376. Those are the calculator's outputs for those inputs, not quotes.

Sources

Bank pages as linked in the table, read 2 September 2026. Cayman Resident, Getting a Mortgage, 16 January 2026; Property Cayman, Mortgages in Cayman; Property Cayman, Bank Financing Explained (Butterfield answers); Bankrate, WSJ prime rate, 1 September 2026; Stamp Duty Act (2019 Revision) Schedule, mortgage head; Cayman Resident, Home Insurance, 7 July 2026; Cayman First and Island Heritage home-insurance pages. Nothing on this page is financial advice, and the banks' pages control over this summary where they differ.