Ensuring mortgage professionals are suitable to hold a license

To better protect homebuyers and mortgage investors, Ontario’s financial services regulator (FSRA) is releasing final Guidance to help ensure current and aspiring mortgage agents and brokers are suitable to hold a licence.

The Guidance helps mortgage professionals understand how past and current conduct may affect their suitability to hold a licence. It outlines best practices for brokerages and principal brokers to screen applicants and monitor their authorized licensees.

FSRA issues licences based on educational and technical qualifications, integrity, competence and past and current conduct.

If FSRA has reasonable grounds to believe that an applicant, agent or broker is not suitable to be licensed, FSRA may take regulatory action, including refusing, placing conditions on, revoking or suspending a licence.

The final Guidance was updated to include additional references to provisions in the Mortgage Brokerages, Lenders and Administrators Act, 2006, and reiterate that the oversight of brokers and agents is a brokerage’s ongoing responsibility.

Learn more:

• Final Guidance on Mortgage Agent and Mortgage Broker Licensing Suitability
• Summary of stakeholder feedback and FSRA’s responses
• Mortgage Brokerages, Lenders and Administrators Act, 2006

FSRA continues to work on behalf of all stakeholders, including consumers, to ensure financial safety, fairness, and choice for everyone.

Learn more at www.fsrao.ca.