In a brutal market, here’s how brokers can continue growing business

With purchase volumes constrained and lender renewal campaigns growing more aggressive, these are challenging times to be a mortgage broker in Canada. But a panel featuring leading mortgage professionals at last week’s MortgageFest Canada urged brokers to look inward, to their existing client databases, as the most accessible source of new revenue in a challenging market.

Christine Xu, founder of the MoneyBroker Canada brokerage and Dan McDonald, co-founder and chief executive of technology platform Ownwell, identified some of the key ways brokers can continue to eke out business in today’s difficult borrowing environment.

McDonald sees Canadians between mortgage terms as “the biggest unmonitored group of homeowners in Canada right now.” He cited data gathered over 18 months from approximately 50,000 homeowners receiving Ownwell’s monthly reporting, finding that between one in eight and one in 10 existing mortgage holders experience a mortgage-related event – such as a mid-cycle move, income change, or relationship breakdown – every single year.

He said brokers can use that to gain an advantage over lenders outside the renewal window. “Lenders aren’t reaching out to your clients saying, ‘Hey, by the way, you might be able to save money by breaking that three-year fixed term from a couple of years ago,’” he said. “They don’t have the incentive to – but you guys do.”

The aggressive lender renewal outreach that has frustrated brokers in recent times, he highlighted, makes the mid-cycle period when lenders are not actively competing a window that brokers should deliberately exploit.

The power of organic networking

For Xu, deliberate community immersion is more significant than digital outreach. She said she’s cultivated new business recently by joining pickleball groups, university alumni associations, regional business networks, and between 40 and 50 community organizations in total.

Her most recent initiative: converting a seminar room in her office into a community card-playing space, open every Monday and Friday during business hours. The informal setting has generated a steady stream of new contacts, she said, who might not have otherwise found her through a web search.

Alternative lending is another growth channel that brokers shouldn’t underestimate. More than 95% of her own brokerage portfolio is in the alternative space – and she agreed that it’s often pointless to try and compete with banks if the client is only focused only on rate.

“I never really compete with bankers,” she said. “One of my biggest referral sources is bankers. Every time in any function I see a mobile specialist from TD, from CIBC, from RBC, I make friends with them.”

AI: How important will it be?

Questions around artificial intelligence and the extent to which brokers should use those tools in their daily work were constant throughout the two-day event, which welcomed more than 2,000 mortgage professionals to Mississauga’s International Centre.

While the rise of AI has sparked questions about its possible impact on a number of different professions, few believe it will replace mortgage brokers entirely – and that message was echoed at MortgageFest.

McDonald cautioned against using AI to replace client contact and predicted that consumers will become increasingly adept at detecting AI-generated, rather than authentically human, communication.

The technology’s real value lies in enabling data-driven touchpoints, he said: showing clients their equity position, potential payment savings, or amortization options, that trigger genuine human conversations.

“Previous technology waves have made the broker smarter, but this one with AI is going to make your clients smarter,” he said. “Use AI for all the other stuff – all the math, all the data – and then spend your time where it matters, which is making human connections with your clients.”

Xu said that her own most effective client-acquisition strategy has run counter to technological automation. “Nothing beats in-person meetings and in-person relationships,” she said.

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