🏠 Protecting Homebuyers and Investors by Ensuring Mortgage Professionals are Suitable to Be Licensed

Thursday, 25 July 2024 12:00.PM

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.

"We want to ensure that mortgage agents and brokers in Ontario are well qualified and trained before being issued a licence, especially during a time when mortgage affordability has become one of the top concerns in the province," said Huston Loke, Executive Vice-President, Market Conduct at FSRA. "This is the first time we're releasing Guidance that explains how we assess if someone is suitable to hold a licence, strengthening sector practices and further protecting Ontarians working with mortgage professionals."

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

SOURCE: Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario

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