Aggregator roundtable 2026: A united front

MPA's 2026 Aggregators Roundtable couldn't have come at a more pressing time for the broking industry.

A litany of headlines – in the trade and mainstream press alike – relating to home loan fraud has reignited scrutiny of the sector. Stories of major banks suspending or terminating broker accreditations en masse, of credit representatives waking up to find their aggregator contracts terminated overnight, and of former brokers being charged with multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud have not painted the industry in the best of lights.

As these issues play out in the public sphere, the debate has turned to how the industry can come together to raise the standards of both new-to-industry and established brokers.

While the broking industry is highly regulated and made up of the brightest credit experts in the country – the overwhelming majority of whom have their clients' best interests at heart – it nonetheless faces a challenge: propping up the best while calling out the rest.

Aggregators sit at the heart of this conversation. They control who enters the industry, how they are trained and, often, how they are held to account. On those questions, there is broad industry agreement about the destination, but the paths to get there vary considerably.

Unsurprisingly, these matters dominated the discussion as seven industry leaders – Tanya Sale, chief executive at outsource Financial; Rob Thomas, national director at LMG; Blake Buchanan, general manager at Specialist Finance Group (SFG); Gerald Foley, managing director at National Mortgage Brokers (nMB); Christa Malkin, general manager – aggregation at Australian Finance Group (AFG); Matthew Whyte, general manager at boutique aggregator Liberty Network Services (LNS); and Stephen Moore, executive chairman at newly established boutique aggregator Viking Aggregation – gathered round the table at the iconic Cafe Sydney.

Two guest brokers – Emma Schuch, founder of Port Macquarie-based Strive Finance, and Christopher Jonson, owner and finance broker at My Finance Agent – also relished the opportunity to press the panel on a number of issues important to them.

It was a lively, animated discussion that got to the core of the challenges and opportunities facing the mortgage broking industry in 2026.

How can we take an industry-wide approach to tackling home loan fraud? What internal due diligence steps do you take on your broker network to weed out bad practice?

Sale set the tone immediately, calling for zero tolerance – not just from individual groups but from the aggregators around the table too.

"I think we should be taking on some of the words that are used in this question: an industry-wide approach," she said. "We have to start having zero tolerance – not only groups but aggregators that have a limited view on the compliance and due diligence regime of what we are required to do."

For Sale, compliance "with a capital C" is not a burden to be managed but rather a shared responsibility to be embraced. "We need us all to stand up, hand on heart as an industry, to ensure that we're all singing from the same page. If we don't sing from the same page, then we're going to be seeing another situation that we're looking at now, and that's the last thing this industry wants."

Whyte echoed the call for consistency, arguing that the industry needs a set of benchmarks that all participants adhere to – and, critically, a shared level of confidence in each other's governance frameworks. He said there's a real opportunity to strengthen consistency across the industry. "For example, if a broker doesn't meet certain standards at one aggregator, others in the industry can feel confident that any concerns are shared and appropriately considered." The solution, in Whyte's view, is straightforward: consistent minimum standards across all groups.

Thomas agreed on the need for information sharing between lenders and aggregators, going so far as to advocate for a central register. He also pushed back on the idea of fraud as primarily a deliberate act by bad actors.

A segment of the affected population, Thomas argued, is made up of brokers who are financially desperate, get approached with offers of large volumes of business and become swept up in something they don't fully understand. "They're not trying to do the wrong thing, but they just get caught up," he said.

The conversation kept circling back to the onboarding of brokers who shouldn't be onboarded, yet Buchanan argued that framing it that way missed the real problem. "If we're going to talk to the fraud situation we're currently in, it's not just about onboarding existing brokers – it's also about standing up new-to-industry brokers with sophisticated, easily approvable mentors and referral partners behind them." The more pressing failure, he said, is a lack of governance and oversight of existing networks: "They haven't picked up on it, and now it's caused a problem for all aggregators, even though 95% of us are not guilty or at risk of it."

Foley brought a regulatory lens to the discussion, calling for improved safe harbour protections that would allow broader sharing of information about broker conduct. Currently, he noted, the framework is too narrow and too easily stretched. "Some in our industry have taken the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) references and applied a very liberal interpretation of what's in it," he said. "You have the ability to say, 'We've received an ASIC reference, we're comfortable with it', and therefore put that person forward. That's not meeting a reasonableness test."

Foley also raised a related issue. Banks sometimes allow employees who have done the wrong thing to resign quietly, leaving no trail that aggregators can act on. "If a lender allows someone to resign and they have a clear separation, that's poor practice," he said. "We have to find out the hard way."

Moore brought a more technology-focused perspective, arguing that earlier detection is the real opportunity. He pointed to the Consumer Data Right and open banking as tools that can verify and validate borrower data at source – cross-referencing wages against payslips, for instance – and suggested that expanding access to Australian Taxation Office (ATO) data could take this further still. "Once you've got data, it's beyond judgement. Facts then rule whether a document is genuine or not," he said.

Moore also acknowledged the irony of AI in this context: while the technology makes it easier to create fraudulent documents, it makes it equally easy to detect them. Metadata – when a file was last edited, by whom and what software was used – provides a forensic trail that is genuinely difficult to manipulate.

For the broker participants at the table, the recent bad press had registered, but in different ways.

Schuch said it hadn't directly affected how she works with clients, but it had prompted a frank conversation within her business about the choice of aggregator. "I personally know how great my aggregator [SFG] is with compliance. They are probably one of the greatest aggregators," she said. "I know we're good because, if not, our aggregator will let us know."

Jonson also said the conversation has largely played out internally rather than with clients. Staff awareness has sharpened, and My Finance Agent has leaned on LMG's education and materials to ensure its processes are sound.

But like Buchanan, Jonson kept returning to the referral partner question – the one variable that is hardest to control. He has also made clear to his team the wider ramifications of poor practice. "I'm instilling in them that if they do the wrong thing, it's not just them that's in trouble," he said. "The whole business is gone."

Malkin drew the threads together with a focus on onboarding and ongoing monitoring. Referral risk, she argued, is most visible right at the start – and too often the right questions aren't being asked.

"It's a big red flag if you have somebody coming in who is able to write a lot of business from a particular referral source right away, even though they might be new to broking," Malkin said. "That's where you're going to identify shadow broking – who might really be sitting behind that."

The ASIC protocol change that enabled aggregator-to-aggregator data sharing was a step forward, she acknowledged, but it isn't sufficient on its own. The challenge is compounded by the fragmented nature of the industry, Malkin noted, adding, "There is no participant in our industry that has a single view of everything." Lenders, regulators and technology providers all have a role to play, but when a lender raises a concern without providing enough information to act on, it makes the task significantly harder.

Sale doubled down on the issue of what should be shared by the banks. "When [banks] share information, as long as they're telling us facts when they're giving a termination letter, everybody's covered," she said. If a bank can see that money has been moved in irregular ways, or that payslips are false, those are facts, not opinions, not interpretations. Sharing facts, she argued, is legally defensible and operationally essential.

Thomas noted that the crisis had originally started predominantly as a bank issue – with proprietary channels implicated – yet the subsequent industry conversation had focused almost entirely on aggregators. "There's no proprietary even mentioned, even in our own industry rags, and they're supposed to be supporting brokers," he said.

The opening discussion served as a reminder that no single fix, whether technological, regulatory or structural, will be enough on its own. What was agreed, however, is that the response must be industry-wide: consistent minimum standards, meaningful information sharing between aggregators, and a zero-tolerance approach to bad actors – including the ones who quietly move from one network to another when things go wrong.

What is the best way we can improve the quality and professionalism of new-to-industry brokers?

The conversation about fraud is inseparable from the question of how the industry brings new brokers into the fold. Too many new-to-industry brokers are entering the market without a clear pathway to sustainable business, supported by mentoring arrangements that can be informal, inconsistently delivered or – in some cases – little more than a revenue stream for the mentor.

The conversation around new-to-industry brokers too often defaults to compliance and governance, but Malkin argued that the real challenges lie elsewhere: in commercial sense, relationship building and communication.

"The ability to speak to a customer and to support a customer is ... going to become the most important part of being a broker," she said, noting that the technical side of writing a home loan is, if anything, becoming less important as technology takes over more of that work.

For Malkin, intervention must happen before a broker writes their first deal – at the recruitment stage itself. "If somebody comes into the industry and doesn't know where they're going to get their business from, we're setting them up for failure," she said. AFG is deliberate about asking those questions up front: How are you going to grow this business? Who are your referral partners? How are you going to get business beyond family and friends? "It's really working with them from the start to set them up for success."

Whyte, four weeks into his role at Liberty but with 26 years in the industry behind him, offered a pointed observation about the structure of induction programs. The instinct to provide close support for a defined period – four weeks, 16 weeks – fundamentally underestimates what new brokers actually need. In his view, "They need a dedicated program for at least 12 months." LNS's 24-month mentorship program addresses this need by not only providing practical lending education but also giving advisers the skills to confidently run and grow a business. "These skills include relationship building, customer engagement and business development," Whyte said.

He also returned to a point raised in the earlier discussion: aggregators have an obligation not just to the person they're onboarding but to the existing brokers already in their network. "It's important to provide high-touch, tailored support to advisers at every stage of their journey, not just in the early stages of business growth."

Sale believes the mentoring system itself needs a fundamental overhaul. "I think it's been the wild west out there for quite a while," she said. The problem, in her view, isn't just the absence of good mentors – it's that the mentoring space has become a money-making machine, with new brokers paying hundreds of dollars a month for access to someone they may barely hear from. "Of course the mentor is doing it for money," she said. But while she agreed that there are some great mentors out there, the system provides no reliable way to tell the difference. At least for now.

Jonson highlighted the potential for conflict between an aggregator's incentive to recruit new agreement holders and the genuine support those recruits need to succeed. In his view, the better pathway for a new broker is to join an established brokerage, get properly trained and then consider going out on their own, but the difficulty is that clients built within a business are hard to take when you leave.

Buchanan rejected the idea that all aggregators are motivated by volume at the expense of quality. "Don't paint us all with that same brush because that's what led to this fraud syndicate … the vast majority of us are actually pretty protectionary of our existing member base," he shot back, although he acknowledged the problem exists by drawing attention to data that shows 64% of new-to-industry brokers don't last a year, with other estimates putting the failure rate above 50%.

"If you've got six out of 10 new-to-industry brokers failing, you've got to ask why," Buchanan said. The answer, he argued, is well evidenced: roughly 90% of those who fail are the ones who go it alone – they're suddenly required to be marketer, compliance officer, data analyst and broker simultaneously, without the support structure to manage any of it. By contrast, new-to-industry brokers who join an established brokerage have dramatically higher success rates. "They're surrounded by care, support and structure – and the governors of that business don't want them doing anything wrong because they put you at risk and your whole family at risk. So there's better governance, and it's a line of defence against fraud."

Foley drew a distinction that he felt the industry consistently blurs: becoming a broker and becoming a business owner are not the same thing. "Becoming a broker is a great profession," he said. "But I think there's a lot of crossover between 'I want to be a broker' and 'I want to build a business'. You can do both, but not necessarily at the same time." He spoke warmly of the brokers who bring new people in, educate and develop them and then watch them go – accepting that some will leave as a feature of a healthy industry rather than a failure of it.

Schuch offered a personal anecdote. Ten years ago, she was new to broking, standing outside real estate open days handing out business cards, calling her aggregator to run through every scenario, learning entirely on the job. "I had no idea," she said. Now running a successful regional brokerage, she mentors a colleague, passing on the same support-centred approach that shaped her own development.

Moore contended that mentoring standards vary enormously across the country and argued it was time to address not just the bar for becoming a mentor but the ongoing obligations that come with it – what you do as a mentor and what you're actually delivering to the people in your care. "That's where associations have a role to play in driving through their standards," he said.

Moore also revived a proposal that had been floated at an industry level some years earlier: a financial services registered number that travels with an individual regardless of whether they're a financial planner, banker or broker. The practical value is obvious: if someone is removed from a network for doing the wrong thing, that fact follows them. "If you want to get rid of someone because they've done the wrong thing, that means you will no longer have them on your register, and we can enforce that across the industry."

Thomas expressed support for the idea. "It's like a driver's licence – you've got a financial licence, and you lose it," he said. However, Moore noted that ASIC's endorsement would be essential, and that the regulator had not previously been open to the concept – but he argued that the case is now stronger than ever, given the stakes for consumers.

Thomas also raised a related structural question: whether the distinction between credit representatives and Australian Credit Licence (ACL) holders is itself part of the problem, with some ACL holders conducting their own compliance in ways that don't bear close scrutiny.

Buchanan put it more directly: "It's widely reported that ACL holders, that are not aggregators, are poorer performers on compliance metrics."

Sale was characteristically blunt in response: "In the new era, ACL holders will have nowhere to hide."

Broker question from Christopher Jonson: As I grow my business, I'm looking to bring on more brokers. As an aggregator, what are the red flags you are seeing with brokers and business partners, and how can you help me find the right brokers for my business?

Thomas opened by acknowledging that the recent fraud cases had, if nothing else, prompted a useful exercise in retrospection. Going back through recruitment records to look for consistent red flags – with the benefit of names provided by police agencies and banks – had sharpened the thinking at LMG considerably.

"If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is," said Thomas. A hypothetical case in point: if a broker gets a random call from an accountant offering $10 million worth of business, praising said broker as a great operator and writing off their previous broker, it's worth approaching with caution.

Buchanan identified referrals from accountants as the industry's single biggest weak spot. "You would just assume there's trust there, right?" he said. Unfortunately, that assumption can come back to bite. "Often that accountant is an ex-broker that was abolished from the industry, or someone setting out to defraud with knowledge of our industry," he warned.

At SFG, any referrer involved in financial transactions requires a recipient-created tax invoices (RCTI) agreement in line with ATO rulings. All referral arrangements must be in writing, paid or otherwise. For any referrer receiving payment, the business conducts police checks, verifies the bank account is in the entity name, confirms GST registration, checks the asset professional registries and runs ASIC reference protocol checks. "That might seem like a lot," Buchanan said, "but when it comes to protecting your business and your family's income, it's not a lot. Those are just some minor steps brokers can take to protect their business and make sure the referrers they're dealing with are bona fide."

On the broader challenge of helping brokers build scale, Whyte drew on his background in franchising. The biggest challenge for any growing business is recruitment and retention, and the industry tends to overindex on the former at the expense of the latter. "Supporting brokers to understand their potential, while reinforcing the importance of appropriate practices, helps builds confidence and commitment," he said. "We're here to provide advisers with the framework to align with best practice across the board."

Sale said outsource's approach to referral due diligence closely mirrors SFG's – requiring full legal agreements for any referrer and, for accountants specifically, checking the relevant professional registers for disciplinary history. Her broader point was that the industry risks overcomplicating what is, at its core, a matter of documentation and process. "I think we're blowing things up in this industry that shouldn't be there, because the majority of aggregators and brokers are doing exactly what we require them to do."

Jonson offered up a memorable phrase: "We're always making rules for the 1%, not the 99%."

Malkin zeroed in on what she sees as the most telling red flag at the broker level: accepting perfectly packaged documents without asking further questions. Whether the source is an accountant or any other referral partner, the discipline of asking where documents have come from, and insisting they arrive directly from the client rather than via a third party, is a simple but powerful safeguard. "Why are you getting documents off an accountant or a referral partner? They should be coming direct from the client or, if coming from an accountant (in the case of financials), cross-reference the content with your client," Malkin said.

Moore described Viking's approach as one of early intervention rather than retrospective review. The industry's typical compliance model – reviewing files weeks or months after settlement – means that by the time a problem is identified, significant damage may already have been done. Viking's technology scans for document anomalies at the application stage, before anything proceeds.

For new brokers in particular, every application is vetted up front. "Half the time it's protecting the broker from being innocently misled or not asking the right questions," Moore said. "That's the power of using tech." He also reiterated the earlier argument for an industry-wide register, extended to cover referrers, not just brokers. If a referrer is removed for doing the wrong thing, explained Moore, that fact should follow them out of the industry entirely.

Foley agreed that AI and technology would increasingly allow the industry to "help us identify in-flight issues rather than post-settlement [when] it's often way too late". He also returned to the mentoring thread, raising a question of terminology that sparked a debate around the table. The word 'mentoring', Foley suggested, has become something of a misnomer, implying a third-party provider arrangement, when what actually works best is something more like training, development and ongoing support delivered from within a brokerage.

"Third-party mentoring has a very valuable role to play; however, it has in some cases become monetised," said Foley, "and it shouldn't be like that." Others around the table agreed that the term 'mentoring' might need a rethink.

Buchanan brought the discussion back to a structural point. Stripping away the complexity, he argued, most of the serious risk in the current environment comes from one of two sources: a sub-aggregator with poor governance or a complicit operator doing the wrong thing deliberately – including under the guise of mentoring. "If we got rid of all of that, the mentoring issue is still an issue, but way less so." The real challenge for any growing business is recruitment and retention, and the industry tends to overindex on the former at the expense of the latter. "Supporting brokers to understand their potential, while reinforcing the importance of appropriate practices, helps builds confidence and commitment," he said. "We're here to provide advisers with the framework to align with best practice across the board."

Broker question from Emma Schuch: How do you support brokers in regional areas?

A short and sweet question, but one that came from a personal place. Schuch's own early experience as a regional broker in Port Macquarie had been shaped less by her aggregator than by a mentor she was paying for and barely heard from.

"If it wasn't for my aggregator and the support of running scenarios through them, I wouldn't be here," she said. The question wasn't a complaint – it was a prompt to make sure the other aggregators in the room were holding up their end.

Sale stressed that, at outsource, "we don't differentiate". Regional brokers receive the same support, processes, relationship management, education and training as their metropolitan counterparts.

Malkin acknowledged that nothing replaces face-to-face contact but argued that technology has made day-to-day connectivity far more accessible than it once was. AFG's approach combines a structured annual program of webinars and online learning with regular in-person events in regional areas – typically run in boardroom settings, bringing together brokers of similar size facing similar challenges.

"You usually find that, in regional areas, the brokers within the area are really well connected anyway, so they welcome that opportunity to catch up as a collective," said Malkin.

Moore conceded that regional brokers are often neglected. For Viking, which is still establishing itself as an aggregator, that neglect represents "a significant opportunity to provide a great level of support in regional areas around the country. In fact, that's what we're doing."

Foley highlighted nMB's professional development (PD) events – which see strong regional take-up – combined with a standing invitation for regional brokers to attend at least one in-person event a year. "The whole concept of being a big fish in a small pond is never more evident than in the regional areas. Drive down, hop on a train, come to the city, meet the team, connect with other brokers," he suggested.

The value cuts both ways, Foley argued. Regional brokers benefit from the broader network, and the aggregator benefits from the connection. He also noted that both industry associations have improved significantly in running regionally based programs, singling out their work in this space as genuinely useful.

In Whyte's view, regional brokers face different challenges and different market nuances than their metro peers, so support programs need to reflect that rather than simply repackaging what works in major cities. "It's why our NSMs [network sales managers] are out there actively engaging with advisers at the local level," he said. This "boots-on-the-ground presence" helps LNS understand the specific opportunities and nuances of different regions.

Thomas said LMG's scale has given it an advantage here, with dedicated regional business development managers (BDMs) on the eastern seaboard who are ultra-passionate about the brokers in their patch. He listed the places he's personally visited – Albury-Wodonga, Launceston, Gippsland, Toowoomba – as evidence that the commitment is real rather than performative. He said the support has to be intentional. "If you neglect the regions, brokers will see straight through. If you're going out there to tick a box, they'll know."

Buchanan was candid that aggregator resources are finite and can't be spread uniformly across every corner of regional Australia. SFG's response is to make access as frictionless as possible. "We try and make access readily available. Under our structure, any of our people can call any of us. There's no pay grades in our business, so they can talk to the owner of the company, me, BDMs, state managers, we don't mind. As long as our brokers are responded to, that's what matters most."

Beyond that, SFG quietly organises regional community events. He cited the Sunshine Coast end-of-financial-year event and similar gatherings on the Gold Coast and in the Northern Territory – under no SFG branding. "We don't want that. We just want the communities to come together." Other aggregators are also invited to participate. "The industry is bigger than any one aggregator; it's about everybody. If we can pool resources in regional centres to give those people more support, that benefits all of us."

Where do you expect the broker channel to go from here, and how do you expect it to keep growing?

While the immediate pressures facing the broking industry are great, it was clear that there was genuine optimism around the table about where the broker channel is headed. Market share continues to grow, the value proposition brokers offer consumers has never been stronger, and the consolidation now underway mirrors the maturation of other professions.

Thomas opened with a view that was widely shared around the table: the channel will grow, but with fewer brokers in it. From the current figure of around 22,000, he expects the number to fall to 16,000 or 17,000 – perhaps lower – driven by the combined pressure of fraud scrutiny, bank oversight and tightening regulation. That figure, he noted, probably reflects the number of genuinely active brokers anyway.

By Thomas's estimate, roughly 20% of those currently on aggregator books wouldn't qualify as active – some holding on for contractual reasons, some doing the occasional deal for a friend and some simply wanting to wind down their operations. "A lot of them now are just saying it's too hard. We've had a lot of brokers caught up in investigations in their 60s saying, stuff it, I'm out."

Buchanan added nuance to the numbers question. Some inactive brokers remain on the books because leaving would cost them trail income. Exit conditions might reduce their payments from 100% to 70 or 80%, making membership worth maintaining even without writing business.

Buchanan's broader prediction, though, was that while the number of individual brokers may not fall dramatically, the number of standalone brokerages will, with more brokers consolidating into established firms like those run by Jonson and Schuch. "More people will be part of a firm rather than going it alone," he said.

Whyte believes AI will reshape how brokers operate and how customers engage with them, but not in a way that diminishes the human element. He outlined a deliberate double meaning from the 'AI' acronym: artificial intelligence and authentic interaction. "They're not mutually exclusive," he said. "The one thing customers want is that authentic interaction – the trust. The brokerages and aggregators that double down on that, and can demonstrate it by utilising AI, are the ones that will stand out."

While the broker value proposition is stronger than ever, Moore contended that expectation around professionalism is undergoing a major shift. Broking, he said, needs to complete its evolution into a genuine profession – with minimum education standards, a discipline of continued development and an end to the notion that part-time participation is acceptable.

"The focus needs to be around driving broking as a profession," said Moore. "And by default, that means looking at the variability in performance across brokers. So that's a gap to close."

"If you do a deal every couple of months, that's not part of the future," Moore continued. He explained how the consolidation underway mirrors what happens in other industries as they mature. The need for broader support infrastructure naturally filters out those who can't or won't meet the bar.

Malkin drew a distinction between two very different kinds of low-volume broker. An experienced operator winding down after 20 years in the industry is a different proposition from a newcomer treating broking as a side job. "Generally speaking, someone who's been doing it for 20 years still knows broking very well. They keep up with compliance and governance; they know how to speak to clients. That's okay." But for anyone entering the industry, part-time simply isn't a viable model any more. "The professionalism of the industry means it's not a part-time role," Malkin said.

Buchanan offered a snappy analogy: "Do you want to go to a knee surgeon who does knee surgeries all the time or just one every now and then?"

Sale, meanwhile, argued that the departure of inactive brokers isn't just inevitable; it's already happening, and lenders are driving it as much as aggregators. The risk, in her view, runs deeper than mere inefficiency. An inactive broker who has written nothing for 12 months, drifts to another aggregator on a flat-fee model and then suddenly reactivates is precisely the profile that fraudsters target. "They get to that broker and say, 'do you want to earn some good money?' – bang."

outsource's practice of flagging inactive brokers when they leave the network is designed to close that gap, and Sale said banks are increasingly getting on board with the same logic.

Foley closed with two observations. On part-time broking, he offered an alternative analogy: "If your car breaks down and you need to push it, the first half of the effort doesn't move it one bit; the second half does. If you're a part-time broker, you're not going to move; you're not going to go anywhere."

Beyond the productivity argument, Foley added a risk dimension that tied back to earlier discussions about fraud. "If you're not doing it all the time, your radar isn't alert. You get a bit lazy, a bit open to the soft introduction – and that will hurt," he said.

On numbers, Foley settled on 75% of the current broker population as something close to the right terminal figure – and suggested there may be 25% too many brokers as well. nMB, for its part, reviews its broker list twice a year and asks portfolio managers if certain brokers will be able to deliver.

Buchanan's response to that was to suggest the industry needs formal minimum standards around volume or transaction activity, and Foley agreed that, ultimately, the obligation sits with the aggregator. "It's almost a duty to the broker to say, 'I know you think you want to hang around, but maybe there's something else you can do'," he said to laughter around the table.