Brokers look beyond rates to stand out in competitive mortgage market
With banks competing aggressively on mortgage rates, some brokers are questioning whether the industry’s push for faster transactions and higher volumes is coming at the expense of client relationships.
Speaking at Mortgage Professionals Canada’s 2026 National Mortgage Conference in Calgary, Renée Huse, founder of Spire Mortgage Team and director of national training for DLCG, said losing business to banks is one of the leading concerns she’s hearing from brokers across the country.
“It’s been a very competitive rate environment,” she said.
“If you were just competing on rate and you weren’t really honing your craft and understanding where your client was at … you were losing those clients.”
Is efficiency always better?
Karen Matthey, co-owner of The Mortgage Professionals in Kingston, Ont., said three separate business coaches had advised her to shorten client conversations to improve efficiency.
“I’ve been through multiple coaching calls where people are like, you need to cut the time down [spent] with your clients. You’re inefficient with your time and you’re spending too much time with your clients,” she said.
While she understood the business rationale, Matthey questioned whether handling more transactions necessarily meant building stronger client relationships.
“If I’m more efficient with my time, I can see more clients and therefore I can do more volume and therefore I can do more business,” she said. “But is that client as sticky? … Are we as close?”
Matthey said she continues to spend time getting to know clients, even when those conversations have little to do with mortgages. She has also recommended that clients accept better offers elsewhere when it makes financial sense, believing they’ll remember the advice when their next mortgage comes up.
Georges Tsovikian of Orbis Group in Montreal made a similar point about renewals. Rather than simply discussing a new rate, he uses those conversations to review a client’s finances and any plans that could affect their borrowing needs.
He also stressed the importance of lender relationships, particularly for files that don’t fit standard underwriting requirements.
Where AI fits in
The panellists were less divided on the need for personal service than on how artificial intelligence should fit into their businesses.
Huse said she uses AI to review recorded client conversations, identify communication preferences and help tailor follow-up messages. She’s also using those conversations to identify common questions that could become educational content for clients.
“I think sometimes we need to slow down to speed up,” she said. “I think that brokers need to actually take a step back from what they’re doing right now, get back to basics, which is building good relationships and think about using some of the technologies and the opportunities that we have to hyper-personalize that communication.”
Matthey uses AI to help draft email responses but edits them before sending. She recalled occasions when the technology misunderstood details in a client’s message, producing replies that would have been inappropriate without a closer review.
Candice Carr, owner of Kindred Mortgage Co. in Saskatchewan, takes a different approach.
“I don’t use it to write emails. I refuse. I feel like when I see an email written by AI, that you can tell it’s written by AI,” she said. “Because I feel like somebody didn’t use their brain to write it. And then I’m like, did they even proofread it? Is this even authentic?”
Carr still sends handwritten birthday cards to clients and makes a point of asking about their families and personal lives. She said those efforts have helped generate referrals.
Looking ahead, Matthey said brokers may find more opportunities in alternative and complex mortgages as conventional prime lending becomes increasingly standardized.
“Those deals are very, very hard to structure,” she said, adding that even experienced brokers can find them challenging and that technology has yet to reach the point of handling such transactions effectively.
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Last modified: October 19, 2026
