A decade of regulatory whiplash taught me one lesson: get ahead of compliance before an audit forces the issue
I founded Pinnacle Mortgage Corp in April 2015, in the middle of one of the most uncertain regulatory stretches our industry has seen. There were FAQs, but they were vague. There was real risk in simply not knowing what compliance required until it was too late. Ten years later, heading into 2026, I am watching a similar kind of uncertainty build again around the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and I think every broker who wants to grow needs to plan for it now, not after the next audit.
Learn the rules before an audit teaches them to you
The mortgage collapse of 2008 happened, in part, because too many originators grew fast without understanding what they were required to do. I have spent close to two decades involved with national industry groups, and that involvement gave me the education to act before making a mistake, rather than after getting caught. We built Pinnacle on that same principle: understand the requirement before you are supposed to know it.
Groups like the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts (AIME) and the Broker Action Coalition (BAC), where I serve as Northeast Regional Chair, exist for exactly this reason. They give independent brokers and small shops the education they need to comply, and they create a safer landscape for the borrowers and homeowners on the other side of every transaction. I have seen shops around us grow quickly, only to spend the next two years playing catch-up with regulators. That is not a position any broker wants to be in.
That discipline is also why we built the back-end support structure we have today, one that lets loan officers originate without carrying the same learning curve we did. I go into more detail on how that structure took shape in our recent look at how multi-state licensing and compliance discipline reshaped one broker's growth.
Why transitional licensing changed my channel's growth curve
If you asked me to name the single regulatory shift that had the biggest impact on how brokers like me were able to grow, it would be transitional licensing. I was closely involved in getting a state-level version passed in New Hampshire. I also working with then-Congressman Frank Guinta, who sat on the House Financial Services Committee, along with our national trade groups to help build support for a national version.
Before 2008, mortgage brokers held more than half the origination market. Within about a year of the regulatory fallout from the crisis and the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, that share had collapsed to under 20 percent. Transitional licensing helped reverse some of that decline by allowing loan originators a temporary period to move from the depository to non-depository channels. It also gave loan originators the ability to obtain a temporary period when entering a new state their sponsoring entity was already licensed. It is a meaningful part of why the broker channel has clawed its way back toward 30 percent share today.
“A lot of shops find out at an audit what they were supposed to be doing all along. Don't wait until you're caught to learn what you should have known.”
For any broker trying to grow right now, that is the hurdle most likely to be underestimated. Get involved in your trade groups, ask questions in the chat rooms both AIME and BAC run for independent brokers, and lean on people who are willing to help before you need an audit to tell you what you missed.
What I am watching at the CFPB heading into 2026
The CFPB's workforce has shrunk under the current administration, and that is not a secret. What I am hearing on the ground in Washington is that a number of the staff who left for the private sector, into contract work and related roles, are positioning themselves to come back. If the 2026 midterms shift control of the House or Senate, a fuller re-staffing of the Bureau becomes more likely, and enforcement activity is likely to follow.
Brokers should treat this the same way we treated the ambiguity of 2015: as a signal to get ahead of the requirements now, while supervision is relatively light, rather than wait to find out what regulators expect once enforcement picks back up. I wrote more about what that oversight shift could look like in our conversation with originators navigating changes to oversight and enforcement, and the same logic applies to whichever administration or Congress comes next in 2028.
Growth in this business rewards the broker who stays a step ahead of the rulebook, not the one who reacts to it. That has not changed in the twenty years I have been doing this, and I do not expect it to change heading into 2026. If anything, it is the same lesson I keep coming back to in our piece on why preparation separates the brokers who win from those left scrambling: the market rewards the prepared and punishes the passive, every single cycle. I highly recommend any broker owner and/or whole channel loan originator to join the Broker Action Coalition (BAC), the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts (AIME), and the National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB) to stay on top of regulatory and compliance requirements.
