Recruitment is about more than simply growing your business. The people you bring into your brokerage can directly affect the quality of advice consumers receive. Your agents and brokers can also shape confidence in your brokerage and the mortgage brokering sector more broadly.
Here are some considerations to factor into your recruitment practices to ensure that only suitable individuals are being licensed:
- documented screening criteria
- licensing, background and reference checks
- competency, conduct and suitability assessments
- clear onboarding and training requirements
- enhanced oversight for new agents or licensees who may pose a consumer protection risk
- records showing how recruitment and supervision decisions were made
Focused reviews coming
FSRA will be conducting a review of recruitment practices in both the mortgage brokering and life and health insurance sectors. As part of this work, mortgage brokerages should expect greater attention from FSRA on how they recruit, screen and onboard agents and brokers. This will include focused reviews of sample brokerages throughout 2027, which means that it is important that brokerages review their practices now and take steps to remediate any gaps that may exist.
Look beyond the licence
Checking that someone holds the appropriate licence is an important first step, but not the only one.
Before authorizing someone to deal or trade in mortgages, FSRA encourages brokerages to consider the bigger picture. This includes a licensee’s competence, conduct history, integrity, and ability to meet compliance expectations.
No single check will tell you everything you need to know. Instead, a brokerage should draw on several sources of information to determine whether a prospective hire is suitable to be authorized by the brokerage. These may include employment references, information from previous brokerages, background checks, regulatory records, and interviews. Taken together, this information can give you a clearer picture of a candidate's experience, judgment, and understanding of their responsibilities. If something raises a concern, investigate it before making a hiring decision.
This is particularly important when recruiting an experienced agent or broker from another brokerage. Moving to a new brokerage does not erase previous conduct or competency concerns.
A history of misconduct, disciplinary issues or termination at another brokerage may indicate that the individual poses a higher risk and requires closer scrutiny and oversight by the brokerage. Without proper due diligence, the risk may simply move with them to your company.
That can lead to unsuitable advice, compliance problems, and potential harm to consumers.
Hiring is only the first step
Once someone joins your brokerage, effective onboarding is just as important as careful screening.
Before working independently, new agents and brokers should understand your brokerage's policies, conduct expectations, products, and compliance processes. Their training and supervision should also reflect their experience, responsibilities, and level of risk.
Ongoing monitoring matters too. Recruitment should not be treated as a one-time assessment.
If an agent or broker later provides unsuitable advice or fails to meet regulatory requirements, FSRA may ask how they were recruited, assessed, trained, and supervised.
Principal brokers must be able to explain why the individual was considered suitable to work with consumers. They must also be able to show what was done to support their ongoing competence and compliance.
Put simply, FSRA expects brokerages to demonstrate that they took reasonable steps to ensure any agent or broker they are recruiting remains suitable to be licensed; and that brokerages have put in place enhanced supervision of agents or brokers where the context indicates the individual poses a higher risk to consumers, whether due to past conduct or being new to the industry.
Learn more:
Review FSRA's brokerage and principal broker responsibilities guidance.