‘I just worry that the quality of training is going to fade away’
It’s no secret: mortgage agents and brokers in 2026 are working from home much more than they did at the turn of the decade, with remote-work arrangements lingering even amid a wider push by leading companies in Canada to bring employees back to the office.
But could that trend be threatening compliance standards within the mortgage industry and making it harder for brokerages to make sure employees – especially new hires – are up to speed with the latest training and regulatory requirements?
Nick Lecuyer (pictured top), principal broker and founder at Mortgage Wellness, believes brokerages without a brick-and-mortar office could be at a disadvantage when it comes to training new staff.
“There’s this huge shift to work from home,” he told Canadian Mortgage Professional. “But to me, that leads to training concerns for both new and experienced agents because there’s a very clear expectation of the regulator that agents and brokers are being supervised by principal brokers and brokers within their organization.
“That’s the whole point of the hierarchy in the licence classes. If there’s no office location where people can go in, get training, and sit and speak to somebody, I just worry that the quality of training is going to fade away.”
Plenty of brokerages and owners will argue that their training standards and agent oversight are more than adequate to maintain compliance and keep in line with industry regulation.
But Lecuyer believes Ontario regulators should double down on principal brokers’ obligations towards their agents to ensure standards don’t slip within the profession.
“In a world where everything is leaning towards virtual and work-from-home, I think the regulator needs to take a stance on how much face time newly licensed agents or even experienced agents get with their principal broker or supervising brokers,” he said.
“We’re leading an industry where people can just work at home and make a very, very good living – but from a regulatory framework standpoint, is it encouraging the most compliant structure? No. Is it encouraging training, levelling up your skills and everything else? No.”
Are stricter training requirements needed for Level One agents?
The Mortgage Brokerages, Lenders and Administrators Act currently requires principal brokers to take “reasonable steps to ensure every requirement under the MBLAA and its regulations are met, and that contraventions are addressed and handled appropriately.”
That means principal brokers are judged on whether their systems, policies, training and oversight are robust enough to ensure compliance and fair treatment of consumers, not on whether they log a certain number of hours of face-to-face contact.
And while a focus in recent years on mortgage agent standards has seen the introduction of a new licensing class, Level Two, for those who wish to transact in private mortgages, a common complaint among established brokers remains how easy it is to become an agent in the first place.
Current training standards after an individual obtains their agent licence in Ontario are inadequate, Lecuyer argued, and should be revisited.
“There still need to be proper rules surrounding newly licensed Level One agents and the amount of training, mentorship and hands-on support that they get,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what that is, but the concept that somebody could just get licensed on day one and have their hands on a file on day two, without any personal one-on-one coaching, is crazy.
“Maybe a suggestion is that [for] the first 10, 20 files that a newly licensed Level One agent writes, they can’t sign the disclosure to borrowers – their supervising or principal broker has to sign the disclosure.”
Brokers still adjusting to FINTRAC changes
In 2024, brokerages faced a new regulatory challenge: the move to bring mortgage administrators, brokers, and lenders under Canada’s anti-money-laundering (AML) and terrorist-financing regime, meaning they were treated more like banks and other financial institutions on AML requirements.
Some teething problems still haven’t been fixed, according to Lecuyer, namely on how the changes and regulatory expectations on brokers have been communicated.
“I think the biggest issue is probably that people just still don’t understand it,” he said. “We get the notices, we get the dialogue, we get the updates – but everybody’s still really trying to figure out what it all means.
“I do agree that FINTRAC is a good thing for our industry. It’s great oversight. The more layers that we have of oversight, the better off we’ll be. I think the challenge is just understanding it – how it works, and what the expectations are.”
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