Passed the exam, got the licence, and now what. Here is a plan a new broker can follow from day one, and what a brokerage should have around you while you do.
Written by A.I.M.I. Collective Mortgage Group, Brokerage editorial team
Published September 2026 · Last reviewed 11 September 2026
Nobody hands a new broker a plan. The course ends, the licence arrives, and the next three months are improvised. That is where most of the two year attrition starts. Below is a plan we give new brokers as a starting point. It is a framework, not a guarantee: how fast you move through it depends on your pipeline, your hours and your market. What we can say is that a broker working this plan, with a mentor to call and the Deal Desk behind them, is not figuring it out alone.
Application, documents, credit, income types, GDS and TDS, the stress test. Run the quick qualifier on ten imaginary clients until the ratios are instinct.
Who takes what: A, B and private, insured and conventional, which lenders like self employed, which hate condos. Sit in on every weekly lender session and take notes on the declines they describe.
Portal, document checklists, lender portals, compliance forms, the Deal Desk submission. Learn where everything lives before you need it at 9pm.
FINTRAC identification, disclosure, file notes, your province's regulator. Compliance is handled at head office here, but you still need to know what a clean file looks like.
Ask a producing broker if you can sit in on intake calls and watch a file from application to commitment. Most will say yes if you offer to do the document chasing.
Take three real scenarios from the team chat or lender training and structure them on paper: lender, product, ratios, conditions. Then compare with what actually happened.
Practise the discovery call and the options conversation on friends until you can explain a B lender rate without apologising for it.
Your first files go in with a mentor reviewing, or through the Deal Desk. Nothing is submitted blind.
Twenty conversations a week: past colleagues, realtors, accountants, your own database. Renewal outreach for anyone you know with a mortgage maturing next year.
Two realtors and one accountant who will send you a file. Not twenty. Two who actually do. Read building referral partners.
The target is a funded file inside 90 days. It is hard and it is the whole point: income lag is the thing that ends careers, and the first commitment shortens it.
After every funded file, fifteen minutes with your mentor: what took longest, what the lender pushed back on, what you would do differently.
A mentor for your first files. The Deal Desk for the ones you cannot place. Weekly lender training. Head office handling compliance, payroll and processing. A team chat where new and experienced brokers answer each other's questions, at 9pm as well as 9am. None of it does the twenty conversations a week for you.
The plan does not end, it repeats with bigger numbers. Read choose your path for what to become known for, a day in the life for what the week actually looks like, and how the income works so year one is planned rather than survived.
Leave your name, province and the month you expect to write it. We will check in around then.
We onboard licensed brokers only, so the licence is yours to earn before we can help with anything else. After that you get weekly lender training, a team chat where new and experienced brokers answer around the clock, and senior brokers who will work your first files alongside you. There is no scripted programme with a guaranteed timeline. There is a room full of people who pick up.
Upgrade from Level 1 to Level 2 in Ontario: 12 months licensed, the Private Mortgages Course, no FSRA fee, and what Level 2 lets you do.
Step by step: the course, exam and sponsoring brokerage you need to become a mortgage broker in Ontario, BC or Alberta, plus the cost and timeline.
What mortgage agent and broker jobs in Canada actually are: commission not salary, licensed through a brokerage, and what to compare before you join one.
REMIC, Mortgage Professionals Canada, CMBA Ontario, Humber, UBC Sauder, AMBA and Alberta Real Estate School compared on price, format and exam rules.
Book a discovery call and we will walk through this plan against your own situation: your market, your hours and who you already know.