Mortgage Broking Solutions

Mortgage broking is a business built on trust, speed, and meticulous documentation — and most brokers are drowning in the third one while trying to maintain the first two. The average mortgage broker juggles 15-25 active loan applications at any given time, each requiring 12-20 documents from the borrower, coordination with lenders, valuers, solicitors, and real estate agents, and compliance documentation that the regulator can audit at any point.

The broker who manages all of this manually is the broker who loses deals. Not because they’re bad at advice. Because they can’t keep track of which borrower still hasn’t sent their payslips, which lender hasn’t responded to the conditional approval, and which settlement is at risk of falling over because the valuation came in low and nobody followed up.

The Speed-to-Settlement Problem

In mortgage broking, speed kills — but not in the way you’d expect. It’s not that fast deals are dangerous. It’s that slow deals die. Industry data shows that loan applications that take longer than 45 days from submission to settlement have a 34% higher chance of falling through compared to those settled within 30 days. Borrowers get cold feet. Vendors lose patience. Interest rate locks expire. Competing offers materialise.

Yet the average time-to-settlement for broker-originated loans is 42-58 days, with the primary bottleneck being document collection from the borrower. Brokers spend an estimated 6-8 hours per week chasing documents — sending reminder emails, making follow-up calls, re-requesting documents that have expired since they were first submitted.

That’s 6-8 hours per week not spent on business development, client meetings, or processing the next deal.

The Referral Relationship Tightrope

For many mortgage brokers, referral partnerships are the lifeblood of their business. Real estate agents, accountants, financial planners, and solicitors send clients who are actively in the market — pre-qualified, motivated buyers who need finance immediately. These referrals convert at 3-4 times the rate of cold leads and typically involve larger loan amounts.

But referral relationships are fragile. They depend on two things: delivering excellent service to the referred client, and paying referral commissions on time. Fall short on either, and the referrals stop. A real estate agent who refers three buyers and doesn’t hear back about any of them will find another broker. An accountant whose referral fee arrives 60 days late will quietly redirect their next client elsewhere.

The challenge is that referral commission calculations are genuinely complex. They depend on the commission split agreement with each partner, the upfront and trail commission rates from each lender, whether the loan actually settles, and whether the borrower stays past the clawback period. Tracking all of this manually across 10-15 active referral partners is where errors creep in — and errors in referral payments are relationship killers.

The Compliance Documentation Burden

Mortgage broking is one of the most heavily regulated financial services in Australia. Every client interaction requires documentation. Every recommendation requires a written rationale. Best interests duty means the broker must demonstrate they considered multiple lenders, compared products, and selected the option that best serves the borrower’s needs — not the option that pays the highest commission.

This documentation burden is non-negotiable, and it’s substantial. A single loan application generates 30-50 pages of compliance documentation: the credit guide, preliminary assessment, credit proposal disclosure, privacy consent, and the broker’s file notes explaining why they recommended lender X over lenders Y and Z.

For a broker processing 8-12 settlements per month, that’s 240-600 pages of compliance paperwork monthly. Most of it is repetitive. Most of it follows the same templates. And most of it is done manually, with brokers spending evenings and weekends catching up on file notes that should have been completed during the application process.

The Pipeline Visibility Gap

Ask a mortgage broker how many active deals they have right now, and most can tell you within a few. Ask them which ones are at risk of falling over, which documents are still outstanding, which lenders haven’t responded in 5+ days, and which settlements are scheduled for this week — and the answer gets murkier.

Pipeline visibility is the difference between a broker who processes 8 settlements a month and one who processes 14 with the same effort. It’s not about working harder. It’s about knowing exactly where every deal stands and what needs to happen next to move it forward.

The brokers I’ve worked with who consistently outperform their peers all share one trait: they have a system that tells them, every morning, which deals need attention today. Not next week. Not “when I get a chance.” Today.

The Opportunity in Automation

Mortgage broking is ripe for automation because so much of the work is process-driven and repeatable. Every loan follows the same stages. Every borrower needs the same types of documents. Every lender has similar turnaround times. Every referral partner expects similar communication.

The broker who automates document chasing, pipeline tracking, referral commission reconciliation, and compliance file preparation doesn’t just save time. They settle more loans, retain more referral partners, and sleep better knowing that nothing is falling through the cracks.

The articles below explore two of the highest-impact automation opportunities in mortgage broking: referral commission tracking and borrower document collection.