FSRA Webinar on new Mortgage Brokering Continuing Education requirements (April 23, 2025)

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Hello everyone and welcome to today's webinar, FSRA's 2024 through 2026 Continuing Education Requirements for Mortgage Agents and Brokers.

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And before we get started, I'd like to go over just a few items so that you know how to participate in this event.

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You have joined the presentation listening through your computer's speaker system by default and to make adjustments to your audio, such as selecting different speakers, click the settings wheel at the top right of the window.

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And then you can make the settings that are under audio.

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Throughout the presentation, you can submit questions for our speakers by typing them into the questions panel and access this panel, click the questions icon at the top right.

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You can submit your questions at any time.

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We will address them during the Q &A portion at the end.

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And you may also enable closed captioning for this presentation by clicking the CC icon located towards the bottom right of the window.

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And with that, I would now like to introduce Adrienne Warner, Senior Manager, Licensing Approvals, FSRA.

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Thank you, Karina.

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Good morning, everyone.

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Thank you for attending today's overview of New Mortgage Brokering Continuing Education Requirements webinar.

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My name is Adrienne Warner, and I will be your host for today's meeting.

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I hope you find today's webinar informative.

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Let's get started. Next slide please.

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So today's session will outline the new continuing education requirements for mortgage agents and brokers, conduct CE versus professional development CE, and reporting requirements for the CE course is taken. There will also be time for questions at the end.

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Please enter your questions as they come in so that we can address them during the Q &A period at end of the presentation.

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Note that a link to the recording will be posted on our webinar webpage in the next week.

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It is important to acknowledge the land we are on is a traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Wooten Oshoni, and the Wendat peoples, and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.

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We acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands.

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Next slide, please.

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Today's presenter is David Ha, Senior Manager, Regulatory and Credential in Oversight.

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Over to you, David.

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Thank you, Adrienne.

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Good morning, everyone.

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My name is David Ha.

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And today I'll be speaking to you all about the new continuing education requirements for all licensed mortgage agents and brokers for the 2024 to 2026 continuing education cycle.

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As you may know, FSRA's CE runs on a two year cycle.

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right now we're in the 2024 to 2026 cycle which actually started on April 1st 2024 and ends on March 31st 2026.

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That means that the CE requirements which I will be spending time to speak to you all about today needs to be completed by March 31st 2026 if you want to renew your license.

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Now FSRA's new CE requirements consists of two components.

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The first component is conduct CE.

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And the second component is called the technical knowledge slash professional development CE.

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Now, I know that's a mouthful, so for the remainder of this webinar, I will refer to this second component as professional CE for the remainder of my webinar here today.

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Now, before I go into greater detail about what the two components are, I wanted to first share with you what FSRA's desired outcomes are of continuing education that's broken down by the two components.

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So starting with the first component, Conduct CE.

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Our desired outcome is to ensure that all agents and brokers conduct mortgage broker activities in compliance with EMBLAD, the Act, its regulations, and topics identified as important by FSRA.

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The second component, which is referred to as professional CE, FSRA's desired outcome is to ensure that all agents and brokers obtain and apply up-to-date technical knowledge in their areas of focus.

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Next slide please.

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Now, on this next slide here, I will explain in detail what the Conduct CE and what the professional CE requirements are.

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And I'll start off with the first component, which is the Conduct-C.

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And that's actually illustrated by the box in the top half of the screen right now.

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The Conduct-C is basically a course that is delivered by the following three FSRA accredited course providers that's listed on the screen here.

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In no particular order, we have the Canadian Mortgage Brokers Association of Ontario, which is also known as CINBAL Ontario.

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We have Mortgage Professionals Canada, which is known as MBC, and we have the Real Estate and Mortgage Institute of Canada, also known as REMEC.

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Now, all mortgage agents, so that's all level one and level two agents, are required to complete this five-hour course that's delivered by one of these FSRA accredited course providers, while mortgage brokers are required to complete a a seven-hour course.

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And I have some good news to share with everybody on this webinar.

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The course is actually available today and it was actually launched earlier last week on April 16th and agents and brokers will have until March 31st, 2026 to complete the convex CE course.

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So that's about 11 months to complete this five or seven-hour course, depending on your license.

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So the convex CE component is very similar to the CE requirements that agents and brokers are used to fulfilling in the previous years.

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So that is the first component, that is Conduct CE.

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I'd like to now move on to the bottom half of the screen and speak about the second component, which is the Professional CE requirement.

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So what is Professional CE requirement?

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Well, licensees have the freedom and the autonomy to select courses to fulfill this requirement, as long as the courses that they take are related to the technical aspects of mortgage brokering.

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All agents, regardless of levels 1 and 2, and brokers, must complete a total of 10 hours of this Professional Seed component by March 31, 2026.

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I want to mention that FSRA does not accredit and FSRA does not approve these courses for this professional CE component.

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So naturally if you're wondering what courses are acceptable or not, FSRA has actually published criteria for acceptable professional CE topics on our website and I will also be spending some more time in my next slide going over some examples of what is an course for this professional CE and what is not an appropriate course.

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But I want to go through the last point on this slide which speaks about the timing of when these courses are completed.

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Only the courses that are completed in the CE cycle, so that is only courses that are completed between April 1st 2024 and And March 31st, 2026 will count towards this professional CE requirement.

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Next slide, please.

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On this slide here, I'll actually spend some time to discuss here in detail which courses qualify for this professional CE component and which will not qualify.

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And I want to spend a bit of time on this slide because we actually commonly receive the most questions here at FSRA related to this topic that I'm about to present to you.

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But before I go into detail, I want to mention again, that the number one key takeaway that I want you all to take away from my webinar presentation here today is that the course will qualify if the course relates to the technical aspects of mortgage brokering.

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And as I mentioned before, if you want some more guidance on whether or not specific topics or courses are legible, please visit our website which we do have website links that will be shown during the conclusion of this presentation.

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But for now I wanted to first start with the left-hand side of the screen and that actually gives a few examples of courses that will qualify and this information is on our website.

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So any courses that relate to legal, legislative, regulatory matters, fundamentals and principles of mortgage brokering, ethics, professional responsibility, client needs analysis, and I won't go through the entire listing today but you will see if you look at the courses on the left-hand side of what qualifies.

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These are topics that relate to the technical aspects of the mortgage brokering and can be applied to the mortgage sector as a whole.

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Now I can turn your attention to the right-hand side of the screen.

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We actually provided some examples of courses that do not qualify for the professional CE requirement and that includes sales techniques, marketing, telephone best practices, recruiting, office skills, company-specific product training, volunteering, language courses and you can see from these examples that we listed here and illustrated on the right hand side of the screen that these could be seen as company-specific training or concepts that cannot really be applied to the mortgage sector as a whole.

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And to further explain and to further drill down into which courses qualify for professional CE, I would love to provide you with a couple of real-world examples and a couple of questions that FSRA has actually handled to date.

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So I will start off with the qualifying courses, the topics.

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So courses that focus on assessing client needs to provide suitable mortgage to clients, this will qualify because it covers the concept and the importance and theory on how to provide suitable mortgage products to consumers.

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Now courses on cybersecurity practices on how to safeguard client information, this will qualify as well because these courses teach licensees how to protect sensitive data, which is crucial for the mortgage brokering activities and protecting client information.

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Another example, courses on legal, legislative, regulatory matters related to mortgage brokering, like this CE webinar here today.

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This will qualify because this will ensure licensees are up to date with the latest regulations and compliance requirements, and it is related to the technical aspects of mortgage brokering.

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And one last example to share with you, Courses on managing the brokerage effectively.

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Well, this will help licensees understand the aspect of running a mortgage brokerage effectively.

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It could be seen as related to the technical aspects of mortgage brokering, so it would qualify as well.

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So those are some examples of courses that will qualify.

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Let me give you a couple of examples of courses that will not qualify for the professional CE requirements.

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Courses that are primarily related to marketing, selling, promotion of marketing mortgage products.

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These won't, will not qualify because they focus on sales techniques rather than focusing on the technical aspects of mortgage brokering.

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Another example, courses on company specific mortgage products or company specific IT software and how to use it.

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This will not qualify either because this is tailored to individual companies and this could be seen as company specific training which is on the list on the right hand side of the screen.

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Another example that I have is office skills like courses on general computer training or office management.

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This won't qualify either because they do not relate to the technical aspects of mortgage burglary.

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Another example that I got is language courses.

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Courses that teach a new language, like maybe you want to take a new course to learn another language so you can expand your client base for people that speak that language.

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Even though you're doing it to expand your business, it won't qualify either because it falls under the category of language courses.

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And the last example that I have of an example that will not qualify is if you attend a professional networking event like having a couple of drinks at the Jays game with your mortgage clients.

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That would not qualify either because it falls under the professional networking category on the right hand side of the screen.

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And I want to end off by saying that this listing that's in front of you today is not exhausting.

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I provided a couple of examples to help illustrate the point but at the end of the day I'll repeat it again.

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The key takeaway is is that the course will qualify as long as it is related to the technical aspects of mortgage brokering.

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And like I said, if you want some more guidance on whether specific courses qualify or if the course is eligible for this professional CE requirement, we strongly encourage you to visit our website. Next slide please.

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The final slide that we have for you today before the Q &A period will be about the reporting requirements for both the components of the CE requirements and I'll remind you again component one being the conduct CE requirement and component two which is the professional CE requirements.

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Now I'll start off again for the top half the screen conduct CE.

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When you complete the conduct CE course and I mentioned before it is delivered by one of the three FSRA accredited course providers.

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The course provider will actually inform FSRA directly about your completion.

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So the good news is that you do not need to report to FSRA that you completed the convex CE course. It will be done automatically.

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Now I'd like to move on to the second component of the CE which is the professional CE and that's illustrated by the bottom half of this screen here.

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All licensees will need to provide evidence of completion during the license renewal process in 2026.

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And the evidence of completion that you provide to FSRA must contain the following information, and it's actually illustrated by the four bullet points on the screen here.

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The name of the course needs to be provided in this evidence of completion, the name of the course provider, the number of the CE hours that was completed, and the date the course was completed.

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We wanted to flag for you that CE hours cannot be claimed for courses where the course details cannot be supplied, courses that you register for but do not attend, hours spent as an instructor or teaching a course, repeating a course unless new content is demonstrated, and any courses where an agent or a broker fails.

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And in terms of maintaining the professional CE completion records, the records of this completion must be kept for four years prior to the current licensing cycle.

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Now, if that sounds confusing, we actually illustrate an example for you on this last point in the screen.

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So let's say, for example, you go out and you complete a professional CE course, a course for your professional C requirements today.

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Today is April 23rd, 2025.

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It was completed for the licensing cycle that will end on March 31st, 2026.

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So it must be retained for four years.

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So it must be retained until March 31st, 2030.

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Next slide, please.

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So that completes the content part of today's webinar.

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And before we go into the Q &A session, I just want the moderator to switch it over to one more slide for me, please.

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Just wanted to share some neat resources with you today that really basically goes over all of the information that was presented to you on this webinar so far.

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The links are there.

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We have four links per licensed class.

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And for more information, like I said, we strongly encourage you to visit our website at these links or reach out to us or reach out to our contact center with this email that is displayed on the screen here today.

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So Adrienne, over to you please.

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Okay thank you David and so we do have some time now for questions so we will take the time to respond to any questions we have received through the chat.

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If you have any questions you still enter them using the Q &A icon on your screen.

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So, David, there are a few questions here in the chat.

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So the first question for you is, what documentation do I need to submit for my professional CE hours during the licensing renewal process? Thanks, Adrienne.

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I'll repeat the question first, but if I can ask the moderator to switch the slide to the reporting requirements slide, I'd appreciate it before I speak. Yeah, this slide here. Thank you.

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I'll repeat the question again to ensure I fully understand it before I respond.

19:15

So just so I understand, Adrian, the question is asking, what documentation does a licensee need to keep once they complete the CE requirements in order to renew the license.

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So my response is for the conduct CE component, I mentioned previously that licensees are not required to keep any completion documents as the completion data will be transmitted directly to FSRA by one of the three accredited course providers, depending which course provider you take the conduct CE course with.

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Now for the professional CE requirement.

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That's a good question.

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Licensees, so the agents and the brokers, they're responsible for keeping the records for the completion of these hours.

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The licensees are not required to upload documentation when they submit their license renewal.

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However, FSRA may ask for certificates or documents showing completion during the renewal process.

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And I just want to note, if FSRA contacts a licensee to ask for completion information during the renewal process, you'll actually need to provide the following four items that I listed here to FSRA, right?

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Like it's the course name, the course provider, the CE hours completed and the date of completion as well.

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And really the key takeaway that I mentioned before is the importance of maintaining evidence of successful completion or the verification of attendance.

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Like we recognize here at FSRA that there are various ways for our licensees to demonstrate to FSRA that they have completed a course or attended an event. So we are aware of that.

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But it's really up to the onus on the licensee to maintain these records and to be able to provide it to FSRA upon request.

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So hopefully that answers that first question. Okay, thanks David.

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So the next question we have is Which course provider should I choose to do my CE with?

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Can I ask the moderator to turn back the slide deck to the, yeah, this slide here.

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One more, thank you, this one.

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So this is how I understand again, the question that came from the chat box is asking which course providers should you select to complete or fulfill your CE requirements with?

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Well, I'll respond to this question for both components of the CE requirements.

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So I'll start off with component one, which is Conduct CE.

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Well, we have accredited the three course providers I've shown you on this slide here.

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We've accredited Simba, MPC, and Remic as the accredited course providers to develop to deliver the Conduct CE course.

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And I mentioned before that the Conduct CE course must be completed by March 31st, 2026 if you wish to renew your license.

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Now for professional CE, there are no accredited course providers.

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Licensees have the flexibility to select the professional CE courses from any provider of their choosing and explore topics and subjects that align with their interests, provided that they cover the technical aspects of mortgage brokering, as I said over and over again during my webinar.

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And I, as I mentioned before, Fisher does not accredit and Fisher does not approve any courses for this professional CE requirement.

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And the key, again, is to select courses that are related to the technical aspects of mortgage brokering for this to qualify for the professional CE requirements.

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Okay, so we do have another question for you, David.

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Can attendance at seminars, conferences, or industry events be counted toward the professional CE requirements and how does that work? That's a great question. My short answer is yes.

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Licensees can definitely use attendance at seminars or conferences to meet this professional CE requirements provided that the content relates to the technical aspects of Now, FSRA will grant CE hours for the professional CE component for only those sessions during a conference that focus on the topics that are related to the technical aspects of mortgage brokering.

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Now, I'll give you an example. If you attend an eight hour conference, three hours out of that eight hours was focused on mortgage legislation, but five hours was spent at a Maple Leafs game.

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As much as we all love the Maple Leafs, only the three hours will count towards the professional CE because that was the time that was actually spent learning and discussing about the mortgage legislation updates.

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I mentioned before that it is the responsibility of each licensee to maintain appropriate documentation as part of CE completion.

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So for conferences and for seminars, licensees must retain the event agenda with a detailed breakdown of the session and the duration.

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And FSRA may request this documentation as part of the renewal process.

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And a question that I actually get asked quite often here in FSRA is what is appropriate evidence?

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Like, how does this look like?

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It's basically anything that can demonstrate to FSRA that you have attended the event such as a completion certificate or such as similar documents just verifying attendance and similar documents showing us or demonstrating to us what the topics are that was discussed during the webinar and we will be making a determination when we review this does those topics does those courses relate and align with the technical aspects of mortgage brokering and the answer is yes and we see the connection it will definitely qualify for professional CE?

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So hopefully that answers that question as well, Adrian.

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Okay, great.

25:44

Thanks, David.

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The next question we have is about completing courses in another province.

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So I completed a few CE courses in another province to meet the requirements of another license.

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Could I submit the CE courses to FSRA to fulfill the professional CE requirements?

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The answer is yes, you can.

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But like I said, as long as the course content that you have taken is related to the technical aspects of mortgage brokering, it will qualify as professional CE.

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And in terms of timing with the courses, these courses must be completed during the CE cycle, which is, if I remind everybody, the CE cycle is between the dates of April 1st, 2024 to March 31st, 2026.

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So yes, as long as it's completed in that time period, and yes, as long as it relates and pertains to the technical aspects of mortgage program, it will qualify as professional CE.

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Okay, so the next question, I think you just touched on it a bit because this question is asking, can I submit CE courses completed before April 1st, 2024 to meet my professional CE requirements?

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The answer is no to this.

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Like I said, it might be a follow up to the question that was asked earlier.

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The answer is no, like only the courses that are completed during the CE cycle, which began on April 1st, 2024, it cannot, like if you completed it before April 1st, 2024, it cannot be submitted to fulfill the professional CE requirements.

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So only the CE courses that are completed during the CE cycle, April 1st, 2024 and March 31st, 2026, can meet or is eligible to meet the professional CE requirements. Okay, let me see.

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So please remember if you have questions, you can still enter them in the chat so that we can ask them here and respond to them.

27:56

I do have another question here for you, David.

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Do I need to meet FSRA CE requirements if I mostly live and work outside Ontario?

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The answer is yes.

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If you hold an Ontario mortgage agent or broker license, FSRA CE requirements will apply regardless of your location of where you live or where you work.

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Another question here.

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Can I receive advanced approval from FSRA that my professional CE course meets requirements?

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Mentioned before that the answer is no.

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FSRA will not provide advanced approval or does not really accredit the approval of professional CE courses and the general rule of thumb and I'm sure everyone here on this webinar is probably tired of hearing me say this, is that the course content must be related to the technical aspects of mortgage brokering to qualify as the professional CE requirement.

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Okay, thank you, David.

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I don't think we received any more questions in the chat.

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So, if that's all the questions we have, I would just like to thank everyone for taking the time to be with us today.

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I'd also like to remind you that today's webinar was recorded and will be posted on the FSRA website in the next week.

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We hope you have found this session helpful and have a great rest of your day.

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Thank you.

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Thanks for watching!