How long does it take to hire a mortgage broker? The full timeline

Hiring a mortgage broker takes months, and much of that time comes after the search. Once a broker says yes you wait out their notice, about two weeks of aggregator checks and four to six weeks of lender accreditation, then a settlement cycle before commission lands. Budget at least a quarter’s cost before a new broker earns it back.

The bottom line: The search is the part of a broker hire that gets planned. FinTalent’s view is that the hire runs from signed terms to first settlement, because notice, accreditation and settlement add months after the yes, and a business that has budgeted only the salary finds that out in month two.

How long does the search take?

A search that goes well takes weeks. One that stalls can take most of a year.

One of our broker searches took 42 days from signed terms to an accepted offer, with candidates in front of the panel twelve days in. What moved it was a change to the seat, a trail share written into the contract. Joe runs every FinTalent search himself, and our mortgage broker recruitment page sets out what he looks for.

Searches that stall run far longer. One principal we spoke to, who says they pay their team over the market, had spent ten months trying to fill a single support seat and summed it up as “nothing’s happened.” Another took most of a year, three adverts and two hires that fell through to fill a settlement officer seat, which our guide to the second advertisement picks apart. If your ad is on its second or third run, why broker job ads aren’t landing covers what the repost tells candidates.

The pool is busy too. Brokers settled 17.2% more home loans in 2025 than in 2024, while the broker population grew 9.1% to 24,116, according to the MFAA’s State of Mortgage and Finance Broking report (MPA). What those MFAA numbers mean for your next hire goes further.

Some principals choose the wait, and say so. One hiring a credit analyst told us “if it takes 2 months, 3 months, 4 months to find that gun, I’ll wait.” That is a fair call once the wait has a price on it. The cost of a vacancy calculator puts a monthly figure on an empty broker seat, so holding out becomes a decision rather than a drift.

Holding out for the right person is different from moving slowly once you have found them. The broker you want may be weighing other offers, and hiring is a sales process covers how a slow, vague process loses them.

What happens between the yes and day one?

An accepted offer starts a second clock. The notice a broker owes when they resign is set by their award, agreement or employment contract (Fair Work Ombudsman), so ask for the clause at first interview rather than at offer. For scale, the minimum an employer must give when it ends employment runs from one week for a year’s service or less to four weeks after five years, with a week more for an employee over 45 who has two years’ service (Fair Work Ombudsman).

The broker is doing sums of their own during that notice. A commission broker walking out of one seat is weighing the trail they leave behind and the clawback that could follow them, which is what who wears the clawback is about. Settle those terms before the resignation goes in, because a broker who finds a surprise in week three of notice can still change their mind.

How long does lender accreditation take for a new broker?

One principal hiring a broker from another aggregator counted it out for us: “there is a 2 weeks for their verification process and 4 to 6 weeks for individual accreditation.” The principal’s next line was “that’s a lot of time.” If those run after a four-week notice period, a broker who resigns today is ten to twelve weeks from lodging with a new lender.

Lenders set their own steps on top. Macquarie processes home loan accreditation for a broker new to the bank once they have done its training, and its application form asks anyone with under two years as a broker or in banking to name a mentor (Macquarie). For someone new to broking, the MFAA requires a mentor for the first two years (MFAA), and a broker who joins the MFAA holding only the Certificate IV has 12 months to finish the Diploma (MFAA). If the business is the mentor, those hours come out of somebody’s week.

Accreditation is fixed time you can plan around. Put it in the start date conversation, and count the broker’s productive life from their first lodgement.

How long before a new broker settles their first loan?

A broker who lodges in their first accredited week still waits on three more clocks. In the June 2026 Broker Pulse survey of 358 brokers, the large banks averaged 3.7 business days to an initial credit decision, small banks 6.3 and non-banks 7.1 (Broker Pulse). In Victoria, a purchase contract usually sets settlement 30 to 90 days out (Consumer Affairs Victoria). The MFAA says commission can take up to 90 days after settlement to reach the broker (MFAA).

Add it up for a broker who needs new accreditations and lodges the week they come through, and the first settlement lands somewhere between month three and month six after they start, with the commission behind it. A settled-volume number in month two mostly measures the lenders’ queues and the vendors’ contracts.

The broker is running the same sum from the other side. A commission broker who moves has no new upfront income until that first settlement pays, which is why recruiting experienced brokers comes down to how the gap gets bridged, and why how a base gets recovered matters so much to the person reading your offer.

What does the first quarter cost a brokerage?

One principal with a team already behind them budgets the quarter rather than the salary. They keep what they called “a decent war chest” for a “cash burn of three months” on new hires, and generally give a new person a three-month window “to feel like they’re safe, to make mistakes or ask questions” before judging whether they are catching on.

Put numbers on that. Our salary guide has a broker with two to five years’ experience on $85,000 to $110,000 base nationally. Three months of that with 12% super is $23,800 to $30,800 before the broker has settled a loan, and before the desk, the software and the hours of whoever is mentoring them. On the timeline above, three months is the floor for a broker who needs new accreditations.

Solo operators making a first hire hit the same wall, and our post on that first hire says to expect the first three to six months to feel like more work, not less. If the reserve is not there, the hire will feel like a mistake in month two whether it is one or not.

What does a bad broker hire cost?

More than the salary, and for longer. One principal told us about an earlier hire who burnt some of their referral partners through mistakes and converted very few of the leads the business was generating. In the principal’s words, “my costs went up and revenue went down”, and the business went into the negative.

Clawback stretches the tail. Lenders reclaim upfront commission on loans discharged within 18 months to two years of settlement (MFAA), so loans written badly in a short tenure can keep costing after the broker has gone. The MFAA has put a first industry figure on clawback, a median gross clawback of $11,442 per broker in 2025, up 16.5%. That is a median of aggregator-level responses across five matched aggregators, not of individual brokers (MPA).

The cost of a bad hire calculator adds up the salary paid during the miss, the lost production and hiring twice, with every input yours to change. Checking a candidate’s volumes before the offer is cheaper than any of it, and verifying a broker’s volumes before you hire sets out how.

What should a new broker deliver in the first 90 days?

Measure what the broker controls. In the first quarter that is accreditations completed, applications lodged, files taken from fact find to lodgement, referral partners met, and how they work with the support team. A Victorian purchase usually settles 30 to 90 days after contract, so we’d look at settled volume at month six, once the pipeline has had time to come through.

If you are budgeting now for a broker in the new year, plan it backwards from the start date:

1. Price the empty seat and the first quarter before the search opens, so neither the wait nor the ramp takes you by surprise.
2. Ask for the notice clause, any restraint and the trail position at first interview.
3. Line up the aggregator and lender paperwork so it starts no later than the broker’s first week, and book the mentor’s hours if they are new to broking.
4. Set the 90-day measures in writing before the offer, on activity the broker controls.
5. Hold at least three months of cost in reserve before the offer goes out.