The cost of an empty seat.
Every month a broker seat sits empty, the settlements that seat would have written do not happen.
Put your own numbers over ours. Every line of the sum is on the page, and every default says where it came from.
Every default here sits at the end of its range that makes the number smaller. Deals a month at the bottom of the band, the aggregator split at the bottom, the salary you save at the top, ramp up and clawback left out entirely. If the figure still looks big, that is why.
Commission you did not earn, less the wage you did not pay.
Every month, and it keeps running long after the seat is filled.
The working
Nothing computed out of sight, so you can see which input to argue with.
| Line | Working | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Settled volume the seat would write each month | loan × deals | $0 |
| Upfront commission on that volume | × 0.65% | $0 |
| What you keep after the split | × 90% | $0 |
| Salary you are not paying, super included | / 12 | $0 |
| Net for every month the seat sits empty | = | $0 |
| Across the vacancy | × 3 | $0 |
| Trail on volume never written, per vacant month | × 0.15% / 12 | $0 |
| Recurring trail never built | × 3 | $0 |
| Held flat over the assumed book life | × 48 | $0 |
What this leaves out
None of these are in the sum above. Saying so is what makes the rest of it worth reading.
Nobody settles eight deals in their first month. The months after the hire cost you as well.
A loan repaid early takes its upfront back. Not counted here.
Send an agent three slow deals and the fourth goes to somebody else.
Usually the principal, doing a job they stopped doing for a reason.
Where the numbers come from
- Loan sizes
- ABS Lending Indicators, national and state averages for new owner occupier lending, June quarter 2026, released 14 August 2026.
- Commission and trail
- MFAA, How mortgage brokers get paid, revised September 2025: upfront generally 0.65% to 0.70% of the amount drawn and trail generally 0.15%, which the upfront default uses. AFG Ltd (ASX:AFG) FY26 results investor presentation, 20 August 2026. It discloses residential upfront of $16.4m on $75.0b of settlements at 3.7% retained, and residential trail of $18.2m on a $221.0b average book at 5.0% retained, which work back to about 0.59% and 0.165%. Those percentages are our arithmetic on AFG's disclosed dollars, not rates AFG publishes. Corroborated by ASIC Report 516, Review of Mortgage Broker Remuneration, 16 March 2017, which found an industry mean of 0.62% upfront and 0.18% trail paid to aggregators on 2015 data, with lender term sheets ranging 0.375% to 1.1% upfront and 0.1% to 0.35% trail. Both figures here are the gross rate the lender pays, and the aggregator split is applied separately below. Upfront is paid on the amount drawn down net of any offset balance.
- Deal volume and the aggregator split
- FinTalent industry reference data.
- Salary bands
- FinTalent FY26/27 Salary Guide.
- Super at 12%
- Superannuation Guarantee rate, 12% from 1 July 2025.
- Working days
- 261 working days a year, divided by 12, so 21.7 a month.
- Months empty and loan life
- Yours, both of them. FinTalent publishes no figure for either, so neither is dressed up as one.
Indicative only, and built on industry averages rather than your book. Your lender and aggregator arrangements will differ, and the figure moves a long way on the deals-a-month input. Use it to start the conversation, not to set a budget. Nothing here is financial advice.
The maths is the easy part.
Once you know what the empty seat costs a week, the question is how quickly you can fill it properly.
Tell us the seat and we will tell you what it takes.