Commercial finance is growing faster than the brokers who can write it

Australia has plenty of brokers who write some commercial lending, 11,785 of them in 2025 across the eight aggregators the MFAA matched. The market is short of brokers who can read a set of financials and structure a business deal. Broker-settled commercial, business and asset finance rose 27.4% that year, and the brokers writing it rose 6.3%.

The bottom line: In 2025, commercial, business and asset finance settled through brokers grew more than four times faster than the number of brokers writing it, and lenders grant commercial accreditation on experience rather than on request. FinTalent’s read is that a principal gets a commercial broker one of three ways, grow one, convert a residential broker with proper support, or bring in a banker, and each has its own price.

What do the MFAA numbers say about commercial broking?

The MFAA’s first State of Mortgage and Finance Broking report covers calendar 2025. Its commercial figures come from a matched sample of eight aggregators, as reported by Broker Daily.

More than half the brokers in the sample wrote some of it. In these numbers a commercial broker is anyone who wrote commercial, business or asset finance, which tells you nothing about who can take a messy trading business from first meeting to settlement. The work also grew faster than the people doing it, lifting the average settled per participating broker by about $730,000 in a year.

Residential ran the same shape, with settlement value up 23.5% against broker numbers up 9.1%, which we unpack in what the MFAA numbers say about your next hire. Part of the residential gap is bigger average loans. The commercial gap is wider, and it sits on a skill set that takes longer to build.

In raw numbers, commercial headcount grew by 701 brokers while the lending grew by $11.2 billion.

Is there a shortage of commercial finance brokers?

There is a shortage of brokers that lenders trust with a commercial file, and the lenders’ own rules explain why. Bank of Melbourne’s published prerequisites for commercial accreditation start with prior experience in commercial lending and writing credit submissions. Rethink Finance managing director Son Pham told Broker Daily that “banks do not accredit any broker that wants to write commercial loans”, and that brokers usually build a record with tier two and non-bank lenders before a major will accredit them.

Aggregators hold the same line. At MPA’s 2026 Commercial Roundtable, the aggregator at the table said it gets a lot of requests for commercial accreditation and takes brokers “through a program” before it allows it. Pepper Money’s head of mortgages said residential brokers wanting commercial accreditation are “crying out for education”, and pointed to more than 26,000 registrations for its webinar education series over the past year.

Principals hiring for the seat hit the same wall from the other side. A commercial brokerage principal told us on a discovery call that the experienced analysts they want, as they see it, now tend to sit in the corporate divisions of the banks rather than lower down the market, because “we can’t find the quality candidates” who can hit the ground running.

Why is demand for commercial broking rising now?

Two policy changes in 2026 point more of the work toward commercial. The May Federal Budget overhauled investor tax settings, and from 10 August 2026 an SMSF can only use a new limited recourse borrowing arrangement to buy real property if it is business real property. Existing loans, and refinances of them, are grandfathered, and SMSFs can still borrow to buy eligible business premises, as the MFAA explains for brokers. In practice that is a ban on new residential LRBAs, and it leaves SMSF borrowing for business real property open.

At the same roundtable, La Trobe Financial’s Cory Bannister said brokerages built on SMSF lending “will be quickly looking to pivot into other areas”. Every participant backed some version of one forecast, commercial broker market share heading for 50 to 60% within the next couple of years, against close to 80% already in residential. The MFAA puts brokers at around four in ten small business loans.

Where do commercial brokers come from?

ORDE Financial’s Grant Smith named three channels at the roundtable: established brokerages training their own people, residential brokers diversifying with proper support, and experienced bankers crossing into broking. The MFAA’s Anja Pannek added two options for smaller firms, referring clients to a specialist, or bringing in someone with commercial banking or broking experience (Broker Daily). Each route costs something different.

Growing one

The principal above described the person they want: a corporate credit analyst in a bank with one eye on getting out, who would learn to shape deals alongside a couple of veteran bankers and ex-bankers, with equity or a partnership down the track. On pay, they said they can be flexible for someone who can generate three times their earnings and put a transaction together with minimal supervision, because good people pay for themselves within six months.

Our salary guide prices a commercial credit analyst separately, at $100,000 to $115,000 nationally against $80,000 to $100,000 for a residential credit analyst. The credit analyst hiring guide covers what the advertised market for that seat looks like. If the plan is for that analyst to become a broker, the support-to-broker career path covers why that promise often never arrives.

Converting a residential broker

The residential broker already has the clients. Accendo Financial’s Trent Carter said on Broker Daily’s Finance Specialist podcast that, on the aggregator data Carter has looked at, business owners make up 15 to 30% of a broker’s database, and that the best first deals are ones that expose the broker to a client’s profit and loss and balance sheet. Pham sees commercial property as the natural entry point, because a residential broker already holds about half the knowledge.

The catch is accreditation, earned one lender at a time. Reaccreditation lag can already cost a residential broker days or weeks when they move brokerages. A principal converting one into commercial is signing up for training, mentoring and a run of smaller deals with tier two and non-bank lenders before the majors say yes.

Hiring from a bank

The banks are hiring the same people. In September 2025 Westpac told investors it planned 350 additional bankers by its 2027 financial year and had onboarded 135, and its May 2026 half-year result put Australian business lending up 16% over the year. NAB’s 2026 business banking briefing lists retaining high performing bankers as a focus.

Pay is the first test. On our salary guide, a relationship manager in a bank’s business and commercial lending team runs $105,000 to $150,000 base in Sydney and $90,000 to $140,000 in Melbourne. A senior broker’s base overlaps both bands before any commission, city by city in hiring a senior broker, so a brokerage can meet a banker’s base.

Skill is the second. The same principal said corporate bankers from the majors come to interview and quickly find their knowledge is narrow, because they know one lender’s policy and appetite. A brokerage like theirs cuts one transaction into parts and places each part with a different lender.

Signing a banker is not the same as starting one either. One brokerage we worked with tried to open a commercial side, and two business bankers signed contracts and never joined. The hire that revived the plan was a residential broker who is also an ex-commercial banker, with eighteen years in lending.

What should a broker or banker weigh before moving into commercial?

The risk on the candidate side is different for each. For a residential broker it is a thin stretch while accreditation catches up, one lender at a time. For a banker it is leaving a salary and a single credit team for a book that may not follow, which will your bank clients follow you into broking takes apart from both desks.

The principal’s fear sits across the table. They are paying for someone who cannot yet structure a deal across a lender panel, or signing a banker who might not turn up.

For a residential broker, the questions worth asking at interview are which lenders the brokerage will get you accredited with, who reviews your first commercial files, and how pay works while the volume builds. Those sit alongside the usual questions to ask before switching brokerages. An asset finance broker moving the other way is running the same exercise in reverse, covered in moving from asset finance into mortgage broking.

For a banker, the demand is on your side. A principal who can see a hire paying for themselves inside six months has room to move on pay, provided you can show you work across many lenders rather than one.

What does this mean if you are hiring a commercial broker?

Pick the route before you write the brief. Hiring out of a bank means competing with the banks’ own hiring programs and paying for it. Growing one means an analyst salary plus a senior person’s time. Converting one means asking your aggregator what its accreditation program involves before you promise the broker a commercial book.

FinTalent recruits commercial, asset and development finance brokers and the credit analysts who work beside them, and Joe runs every search himself. Three of the commercial-capable brokers we have placed came out of business banking or commercial credit. One brokerage hired an accountant out of business banking for commercial knowledge none of its other brokers had. Another hired a credit partner from commercial and development finance, who picked that business over a direct competitor.

The finance broker recruitment page sets out what we look for in that seat, starting with settled volume you can verify.