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Mortgage brokers raising the floor, not just the roof

A decade of tighter rules, higher expectations and smarter technology has reshaped what it means to be a mortgage broker – and the best in the business are still raising the bar

Noushig Megerditchian

Finsure

Industry experts

Paul Song

Finsure

Kristy Atkins

Parity Capital

Sally Prowse

Sandcastle Finance

Noushig Megerditchian is head of sales – northern region at Finsure. She has spent most of her career in the banking and finance arena, specifically in third party distribution. Servicing the broker channel is her life passion, and she has done this for the past 15 years. Experienced in lending, aggregation and business coaching, she prides herself on the success that her team and brokers achieve. She is also co-chairwoman of Women in Finsure, a supportive platform to ensure equality throughout the Finsure network and the finance industry as a whole.

Finsure

Noushig Megerditchian

Paul Song is state manager NSW/ACT at Finsure, based in Sydney. With nearly two decades in Australian financial services across lending, product and customer experience, he partners with brokers to grow sustainable, client‑first businesses. Song joined Finsure in late 2022 and now leads the relationship management team supporting more than 2,000 members through strategic guidance, education and business support solutions. Known for his collaborative style and focus on culture, Song is passionate about diversity, inclusion and mental health advocacy within the broking and wider finance community.

Finsure

Paul Song

Kristy Atkins is a director and finance broker at Parity Capital, with more than 15 years’ experience in business and commercial banking. Based in Sydney, she specialises in delivering tailored lending solutions across residential, asset, commercial and investment finance. Atkins is known for her client-centric approach, combining technical lending expertise with clear communication to simplify the borrowing process. Having worked alongside leading brokers before co-founding Parity Capital, she focuses on providing flexible, competitive options aligned to each client’s goals, while advocating strongly on their behalf throughout the loan journey.

Parity Capital

Kristy Atkins

Sally Prowse is the founder and managing director of Sandcastle Finance, a Sydney-based brokerage she launched in 2014. With over 20 years’ industry experience, she specialises in strategic lending, property investment structuring and long-term wealth planning. Prowse is particularly known for supporting women and self-employed clients, helping them rebuild financial confidence and create sustainable wealth through property. A qualified mortgage broker, real estate agent and MFAA-accredited mentor, she combines technical expertise with an empathetic, education-driven approach, and is a regular speaker on financial empowerment, wealth creation and retirement strategy.

Sandcastle Finance

Sally Prowse

Mansour Soltani leads Soren Financial, working with clients across home loans, refinancing and property investment. His approach is direct: Say what’s going on, call out what doesn’t stack up, and structure things properly from the start. Clients come to him for clear advice, not a sales pitch. A regular media contributor, he has provided commentary to outlets such as ABC, Domain and Australian Broker, sharing insights on lending strategies and property market trends. He holds a Certificate IV and Diploma in Finance and Mortgage Broking and has received multiple five-star Google reviews.

Soren Financial

Mansour Soltani

“The true professionals are working alongside the client … to help that client and be an advocate for that client and structure their loans in a way where they can continue growing”

Vache Vartanian, Hero Finance

THERE WAS a time, not so long ago, when being a good mortgage broker meant knowing what rate a client could get before the client could find out for themselves. Information asymmetry was the product. Access was the service. “A professional in the mortgage broking industry was someone who had access to the information that clients didn’t,” says Vache Vartanian, founder, director and head broker at Hero Finance. “[Clients] wanted to know what rate they could get, what was the best deal for them and how they should approach things – that was a professional back then.” Today, that version of the profession looks like a very low floor. Piece by piece, mortgage brokers have built up a scaffolding of excellence to find themselves in a high tower, where the old ground lies so far below, it all but disappears. Vartanian describes what has replaced the old transactional role of mortgage broking as something closer to a long-term partnership. “Now it’s become more of a partnership with clients, to work with them, to hold their hand, to guide them,” he says. “The true professionals are working alongside the client – not to get money out of them, never to see dollar figures, but to help that client and be an advocate for that client and structure their loans in a way where they can continue growing.”

“Ongoing professional development is critical, and if you don’t do it, you’re not going to be around for too long”

Kristy Atkins, Parity Capital

“I don’t know how people can get away with just using one or two or three lenders now. I think you just have to be able to do the right thing by clients”

Sally Prowse, Sandcastle Finance

Soltani went further, arguing the profession should be more selective from the outset. “I think personally that we should have barriers up to just not allow them to join in the first place,” he said, “because if they pick up a client, they’re the clients that you see in the comments of social media.” Kristy Atkins, director and finance broker at Parity Capital, came to broking from a banking background and identifies a structural problem that tighter entry standards alone won’t solve. Brokers seeking to diversify into commercial lending often find themselves locked out of accreditation with major lenders, which pushes them towards second-tier options that may not serve clients as well. “They don’t have access to the lenders that some of these clients should go to,” she said. “It’s a bit of a double-edged sword, and I don’t really know what the solve is.” Soltani also recounts what he told a young woman who approached his business, having just completed her Certificate IV. Rather than hire her, he sent her away to gain credit experience first. “If you want to be a really good broker, you need to understand credit,” he pointed out. “If I was to rewind and go back to my early 20s, that’s how I would have done it as well.”

“If you want to be a really good broker, you need to understand credit. If I was to rewind and go back to my early 20s, that’s how I would have done it as well”

Mansour Soltani,Soren Capital

Megerditchian put the investment mindset plainly. “The brokers that are investing in themselves, not every year but every month, are the most successful ones,” she said. Song sees the aggregator’s role as extending well beyond accreditation paperwork. Professional development, in his view, means getting lenders in front of brokers regularly and giving them the tools to find their next opportunity. “Activity drives results,” he said. “At Finsure we do so many webinars; we’ve got PD days, we’ve got conferences. The education piece is so important, and that’s why it’s crucial that an aggregator is providing that to the brokers and to the network.”

Prowse pushed back gently on the idea that trust in brokers has declined, pointing to market share as evidence of the opposite. “You can see how many brokers are now writing loans. That’s sort of contradictory in a way, because you can see that brokers are more trusted rather than going to a bank,” she said. The latest MFAA survey shows that mortgage brokers facilitated 77.3% of all new residential home loans in the September 2025 quarter and 76.7% in the December quarter. Atkins attributes this high number largely to the relationship advantage brokers hold over branch staff, where turnover is frequent. Megerditchian said protecting the profession’s reputation was the driving motivation behind Finsure’s decision to raise its entry requirements. Brokers within the network, she added, were quick to support the move. “We won’t onboard just anyone off the street. We will look for that person who’s done a finance degree and wants a pathway.”

Recently, Australian Broker met at Cafe Sydney restaurant with representatives from aggregator Finsure, alongside a group of leading mortgage brokers that included Vartanian. The group explored what professionalism really means in a post-royal commission industry, how entry standards and ongoing education are reshaping the broker’s role, and whether technology and artificial intelligence are about to sort the great from the merely adequate. It turns out that being ‘professional’ in mortgage broking is both more demanding and more interesting than having a certificate on a wall.

Vartanian also highlighted a dimension of professional development that rarely appears in CPD catalogues: the quality of relationships with bank staff. He argues that the effort a broker puts into knowing their BDMs and credit officers pays dividends when competing files hit a bottleneck. “If Joe Bloggs here puts a file through, and I put a file through, and we both need an escalation done at the same time, and there’s limited capacity, chances are they’re not going to escalate Joe Bloggs’ deal,” he says. “They’ll be escalating mine because I took the effort to build a strong relationship with the BDM and other key stakeholders; it’s human nature.” Prowse has formalised ongoing education at Sandcastle Finance by bringing lenders in on a fortnightly basis. “Every second Wednesday at least, we have a lender come in, because they always want to come and see you anyway,” she said. “There’s something you learn every single time.” Beyond the loan The most substantive shift in how brokers now define their role is the expectation that the relationship doesn’t end at settlement. Trail commissions have always implied an ongoing obligation, but the better brokers describe something closer to financial coaching. Soltani’s business runs webinars with clients, connects them with financial planners and shows amortisation tables so clients understand how extra repayments affect their loan term.

Industry aggregators are now moving to formalise higher standards at the point of entry. Noushig Megerditchian, head of sales for the northern region at Finsure, said her organisation made a deliberate decision to stop accepting new-to-industry applicants unless they had credit or lending experience in the industry. “We want to change the image of brokers,” she said. “We have some very well-established, knowledgeable, experienced brokers, but those one or two [with weaker skills] were tarnishing the name.” Paul Song, state manager for NSW/ACT at Finsure, added that a diploma is now the organisation’s minimum standard for entry. “It’s a shame that it’s taken so long to get to this point, but it’s great to see that we’re on the right path.” The push for higher entry standards reflects a broader concern in the industry about what happens when the bar is set too low. Sally Prowse, founder and managing director of Sandcastle Finance, has worked in the industry for two decades and regards new entrants with a mixture of encouragement and wariness. “I don’t know how people can get away with just using one or two or three lenders now,” she said. “I think you just have to be able to do the right thing by clients.” Soltani went further, arguing the profession should be more selective from the outset. “I think personally that we should have barriers up to just not allow them to join in the first place,” he said, “because if they pick up a client, they’re the clients that you see in the comments of social media.”

She also pointed to the commercial opportunity that other brokers’ complacency creates. “We’re working with other brokers’ clients because they’re not reviewing, they’re not checking in, they’re not telling the clients about other opportunities they could have in terms of a better product offering,” Atkins said. “It could be just doing something as simple as a valuation on their property to see what equity they’ve got to release towards something else.” Atkins added that cross-referral between brokers is one underused form of professional development, particularly by those wanting to learn commercial lending. “I don’t just go and take that deal off you. I’m happy to workshop it with you, put it through together, so that you’re getting some learning in that professional development where there’s not necessarily a hard and fast structure for learning how to write commercial,” she said.

Read on

His firm also deliberately avoids referral fee arrangements, which he sees as a question of values. “We want to work with people who actually want to do the right thing by the client and not because we’re going to get a clip,” he said. “When we are saying to someone, we want you to go and get financial advice around getting life insurance now that you’ve bought this asset – all of that is part of them upskilling and starting to plan for retirement.” Prowse is involved in a financial literacy program being introduced into schools and sees it as a natural extension of the broker’s community role. “I think it’s our responsibility to teach people a lot because no one else does,” she said. Trail income, in her view, carries an obligation that goes beyond rate reviews. “When we do get a trailing commission, I think that’s our responsibility to keep educating our clients and keeping in contact with them.” Atkins sees the broker’s responsibility to clients as something that builds quietly over time, often without the client realising it. Having come from banking, she once watched clients whose brokers weren’t performing. “Since leaving [banking], I’ve picked up five or six of those clients because their broker wasn’t doing the right thing,” she said. “It was only when I left that they saw, actually, it was the banker who was doing the job for me.”

Professionalism as a business identity The conversation about professional standards ultimately circles back to something simpler: whether a broker thinks of themselves as running a business or just doing a job. Song put it plainly. “If you’re running a business, be that owner,” he said. “Customers are using ChatGPT – ‘who’s my best broker around the area?’ – and if you’re not on there, then why aren’t you on there?” Megerditchian confirmed that Finsure won’t onboard new brokers who are operating on generic email addresses. “If you want to look professional and you’re running a business, you can’t have johnsmith@gmail – you’ve got to have a domain,” she said. “If you’re not serious about your business, you’re not professional, and we don’t want to accept you.”

Established in 2011, Finsure has evolved into one of Australia’s largest mortgage broking groups. The core of our business ethos is a desire to provide the strongest value proposition to all our broker partners. This underpins who we are as an organisation and why we are able to provide the maximum value to those who align with us. We currently have a network of over 4,000 brokers, while our loan book exceeds $175 billion. With an international presence, Finsure is a dynamic, scalable, technology-enabled aggregator that’s ahead of the pack and driving broker recruitment through innovative solutions and breadth of service.

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Published 01 Jun 2026

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Vache Vartanian

Hero Finance

Mansour Soltani

Soren Financial

Vache Vartanian is the founder, director and head broker at Hero Finance, a Sydney-based mortgage brokerage established in 2016. He is also the visionary behind The Mortgage Club, an Australian-first initiative designed to reward clients with monthly giveaways, and the founder of Fincheck, a revolutionary anti-fraud software solution designed to protect brokers, accountants, aggregators and lending institutions. With a career spanning major institutions, including Westpac and Citibank, Vartanian brings deep expertise in retail banking, home lending and credit policy. Known for structuring loans with long-term wealth creation in mind, he specialises in helping clients navigate complex scenarios and build scalable property portfolios through tailored, forward-thinking finance solutions.

Hero Finance

Vache Vartanian

Source: MFAA

Mortgage brokers facilitating over three quarters of new home loans

Dec qtr 2023

Dec qtr 2024

Sep qtr 2025

Dec qtr 2025

76.7%

71.8%

76.0%

77.3%

From left: Sally Prowse, Sandcastle Finance; Paul Song, Finsure; Kristy Atkins, Parity Capital; Mansour Soltani, Soren Financial; Noushig Megerditchian, Finsure; Vache Vartanian, Hero Finance

Source: CreditorWatch Annual Business Sentiment Survey

Financial and business services report high ROI from AI adoption

satisfaction with ROI among financial and business services adopting AI

95%

The tool automatically alerts his team when a client hits their six-month anniversary, prompting a pricing review. It’s a small example of something the whole conversation points towards: that in a mature profession, the floor keeps rising, and the brokers who stay ahead of it are the ones who treat the business of broking as seriously as the loans themselves. After a decade of reform, education and smarter tools, the industry’s real achievement isn’t just that its best brokers have reached new heights; it’s that the whole structure has been rebuilt underneath them. What used to be the top level of professionalism is now the first landing.

“The education piece is so important, and that’s why it’s crucial that an aggregator is providing that to the brokers and to the network”

Paul Song, Finsure

AI as the next scaffold Expectations around professionalism are also changing as technological capabilities increase. A CreditorWatch survey showed AI adoption is accelerating across financial services and business services, reporting adoption rates of 49% and 53%, respectively, in the year to September 2025, with very high satisfaction around return on investment. Soltani described how his business built its own automated pricing tool using a no-code app builder, something that would have required a developer and a budget a few years ago. “In 2026, if you know nothing about HTML coding, you can use an app to build a piece of software in a couple of hours,” he said.

A push for higher entry standards Entry into broking has, for years, been relatively accessible compared to other financial services roles. A Certificate IV in Finance and Mortgage Broking was the baseline, and critics argued it was too low a bar for the complexity of advice brokers were expected to deliver. That is beginning to shift. Mansour Soltani, director at Soren Financial, offered a telling comparison. “My wife became a broker two years ago, and I can see the difference in the Cert IV that I did six years ago versus the Cert IV that she did two years ago – it’s vastly different,” he said.

Learning as a professional obligation Entry qualifications get the headlines, but the brokers who spoke at length on this topic were equally concerned about what happens after someone gets their licence. The industry’s CPD requirements exist, but several brokers questioned whether they were being treated as a genuine learning opportunity or as a compliance checkbox. Atkins was direct about the consequences of coasting. “If you’re just sitting back relying on what you learned before you came in or what qualification you had to do coming in, you’re going to get left behind because these lenders are changing on the daily,” she says. “That ongoing professional development is critical, and if you don’t do it, you’re not going to be around for too long.”

Trust, perception and the value of expertise One of the more candid threads of the conversation concerned how brokers are perceived, and whether the profession has inadvertently undermined its own standing by positioning itself as a free service. Soltani argued that the cost-free perception creates a respect problem. “When you offer a service that people perceive to be free, they don’t respect it,” he said. His business charges fees for complex work, including to self-employed clients with multiple trusts seeking commercial lending, and is explicit about this up front. “We want clients who actually value what we do,” he adds.

Song sees the best interests duty not as a compliance burden but as a natural outcome of asking the right questions. “Each client is a unique scenario with a different issue or problem,” he said. “When you are asking all those questions, the recommendation should be via various options of lenders that are actually suited to them – not just filling in the gaps.” Vartanian is optimistic that better technology and tighter compliance will accelerate the sorting process. “In the next two, three, five years, the trust in brokers will improve even more,” he said. “A lot of the untrustworthy or unethical brokers will be weeded out, which will help our industry.”

Prowse sees transparency as the foundation on which business identity is built, whether that means being upfront about referral arrangements or being visible in the community. “We have an important role in the community as brokers, because we are helping other people,” she said.

Noushig Megerditchian, Finsure

“We won’t onboard just anyone off the street. We will look for that person who’s done a finance degree and wants a pathway”

The brokers who keep climbing – adding new qualifications, new technologies and new ways to serve – are the ones who can see further on behalf of their clients, and who keep raising the floor as well as the roof.