New Accreditation System For Mortgage Brokers

By FutureNestEgg | August 20, 2009

Most of us go to mortgage brokers because of the choice – they can assess our requirements and suggest the best home loan product for us. Mortgage brokers can be associated with one or more lenders – the more lenders they are associated with, the better the choice. To be accredited with the lender, the broker has to complete a course (offered by the lender). The aim of the course is to educate them with their products.

In July CBA and Westpac changed the criteria for continuing to remain accredited to them – CBA now requires that the brokers must submit a minimum of four home loan applications and settle a minimum of three loans in a six-month period to remain accredited. If they lose their accreditation, they will have to do the course with CBA again and this will cost them $500.

Westpac requires brokers to write at least one loan every six months – If they lose their accreditation with Westpac, they have to re-sit for the course and this will cost them $150.

The rationale used by the banks for this change is that if the brokers are not writing loans regularly then they obviously are going to lose touch with their products and so to keep them better educated it is only fair to get them to re accredited.

You see the problem though is that this tough conditions will impact the competition. Now if a broker has not met his CBA monthly quota and if you happen to go to him at this time then the chances of him suggesting that you go with a CBA home loan product are very high.

What are your opinions about this – do you think banks can do what they like or do you think ACCC should intervene?

Best,