'Leads provided' in mortgage broker jobs rarely comes with a number

In a mortgage broker job, “leads provided” means the business hands you some of your clients. Most ads leave it there. They rarely say how many leads, where they come from, how many settle, who owns the client, or what a deal you find yourself pays. Brokers and principals then blame each other for a term neither side wrote down.

The bottom line: “Leads provided” is one of the most common promises in broker job ads and one of the least defined. Brokers fear a lead supply that slows with no reward for finding their own clients, and principals fear brokers who never work past what they are handed. FinTalent’s view is that the offer should state volume, source, conversion with its definition, client ownership and the self-sourced split.

Joe runs every FinTalent search himself, and lead supply comes up on his calls from both ends. The quotes below are checked against the recordings and emails, with names and firms left out.

What does “leads provided” mean in a mortgage broker job?

It means the business generates enquiries and passes some to you, usually for a lower split or alongside a base. It is one of the most advertised benefits in broker ads, and our guide on being short of leads or short of conversion counted how often. The same guide found that none of the brokerage website descriptions in its sample mention supplying leads. The promise is made in the job ad, and the firm’s own description leaves it out.

It sells because leads are hard to come by. Lead generation was the lowest-rated of 11 aggregator services in MPA’s 2026 Brokers on Aggregators survey, scoring 3.041 out of five from more than 720 brokers, down from 3.093 in 2023.

Some ads do define it. One recent ad puts sixty leads a month in the job title. The clients arrive pre-qualified, mostly first home buyers, from the group’s own sales consultants, on a roster that runs to 7pm six days a week. It says the seat is not for brokers who want to run their own book. It still says nothing about how many of the sixty settle, and the split is “high” and “negotiable”.

A monthly volume is rare in the ads we read, and we found none that gives a conversion rate along with what it is counted from. Both sides’ fears start in that gap.

What is the broker afraid of?

The broker’s fear is a seat built on a lead supply someone else controls.

One contract broker was leaving a lead-fed seat mainly because the “turnout rate” on supplied leads was about 2%. Three appointments were booked for them a week, and on average one every six weeks turned up. Everything they settled in the past couple of months they had generated themselves, while paying the business for leads.

Another broker in a lead-fed seat had about four leads in a whole month. A colleague in operations told them lead volume was down by almost half on the year before. The broker was halfway through the savings meant to carry them until broking covered the costs.

One salaried broker’s leads were limited while the pool was shared across a bigger team, and rose once the team was cut back.

An asset finance broker told Joe they are paid the same split whether the business hands them the lead or they bring it in themselves, while colleagues on an older contract get a bigger share of what they bring in. They asked what motivation they have to bring in their own leads when their own deals earn them no more.

For a broker, the risk sits in three places. Volume can fall without notice, the pool may be shared more widely than the ad says, and there may be no premium for building a book of their own.

What is the principal afraid of?

The principal’s fear is the mirror image, a broker who never works past what they are handed.

One principal said the leads are there for their brokers and “everything is handed to them”, then added “maybe that is the problem”, because there are “no hard yards to go through”. The salaried broker above said it from the other side, that they do not actively look for their own leads because they are “not required to and the incentive isn’t there”. In Cotality’s 2026 survey of 414 Australian brokers, 45% said they do not communicate regularly with clients or referral partners, and only 19% said they do it consistently.

Principals also know most leads are not clients. A property investment principal said that of every 100 leads their own firm generates, 10 are good and 5 reach finance. A senior broker less than a year into building a commercial brokerage said they had not had much luck with lead generation companies or referral partners, and that “everyone’s been lying to us”.

A car finance principal put the business case in writing. They put the lead spend to build a broker’s pipeline at $10,000 to $20,000. Pay a higher split on self-generated deals and, in the principal’s words, “naturally they are incentivised to prioritise that opportunity” over the leads the business paid for. The principal keeps every split the same across every source, and would consider a higher split on all revenue for a broker whose business is mostly self-generated and who needs few leads.

For a principal, the risk is paying for a pipeline and getting a broker who only works the pipeline, or one who works around it.

What conversion rate should a broker expect on supplied leads?

There is no market figure. The industry’s best-known number measures something else.

The MFAA’s Industry Intelligence Service report for April to September 2024 put broker conversion at 76.1%. That is home loans settled as a share of applications lodged, and the MFAA warns that some aggregators count conditional approvals instead of applications. It starts after the hardest part of a lead’s life.

When Joe asked the car finance principal for their average conversion on around 100 leads, the answer was that it depends on the definition. Leads to settled contract, leads to application, and “those that are spoken with” to contract are three different numbers, and the first includes people who cannot be contacted or have bad credit.

Each figure below counts something different.

For a rough yardstick, the MFAA’s State of Mortgage & Finance Broking Report 2026 counts 838,815 home loans settled through brokers in 2025, and MPA’s coverage of the report puts the broker population at 24,116. That is about 35 loans per broker for the year, a little under three a month. A seat promising sixty leads a month needs about one in twenty of them to settle for its broker to write the average. Whether that is easy depends on which number in the table the principal means.

A conversion figure is only useful with its endpoint attached, and lead to settlement is the one a broker’s income depends on.

Who owns the client when the brokerage supplies the lead?

Usually the business, and the offer should say so, because the first loan is the smaller part of what a client is worth. In the MFAA’s Value of Mortgage and Finance Broking 2025 report, prepared by Deloitte Access Economics from a survey of 454 brokers and 393 broking businesses, repeat customers made up 44% of broker business and customer referrals another 28%, so 72% of the work comes back through the relationship.

Whoever owns the client owns the refinance, the next purchase, the referral and the trail. A broker who leaves a lead-fed seat usually leaves those clients behind, which is why our piece on switching brokerages calls “whose book is it” the big one. The recent ad above is clear on it, because its sales team handles the client relationships.

Ownership does not move the legal duty. Under the best interests duty, set out in ASIC’s RG 273, the broker giving credit assistance must act in the client’s best interests however the lead arrived.

Ownership is the term with the longest tail. The offer should name who keeps the client, the trail and the repeat business, and what happens to each if the broker leaves.

Should brokers get a higher split on leads they find themselves?

The broker’s case is that on one flat split, a client you find yourself earns you nothing extra. The principal’s case is that a higher self-sourced split pulls effort away from leads the business has already paid for.

Our guide on what your split is really buying sets out the usual fork between house leads and self-generated business, and why a lower split with real lead flow can out-earn a high split on what a broker finds alone. Commission-only broking sits at the far end of that fork.

Either structure can work when someone explains it. The asset finance broker above had never been sure their arrangement was right, and said they did not know if they were “getting screwed over”.

What should a leads-provided offer spell out?

Five terms cover both sides of the fear.

For a broker weighing a seat like this, the broker earnings calculator shows what a given volume and split pays, and what broking roles really pay covers upfront and trail. Bankers moving across are used to having leads handed to them, as where new brokers come from points out, and a lead-fed seat is the nearest thing broking has to that. For a principal hiring into a lead-fed seat, our mortgage broker recruitment page sets out how the search runs.