How Much Does It Cost to Use a Mortgage Broker in Sydney?
For most standard home loans, nothing. Every page answering this question says that and then stops. The second-order question is where the money comes from, and what the payment structure rewards.
What we charge you
Intellect Finance is free. Not free with conditions. Free.
No consultation fee. No advice or strategy fee. No application or packaging fee. No success fee. No charge for the lender comparison, and nothing payable at settlement. That applies to every client and every loan type we arrange, residential, commercial, SMSF and asset finance alike. You will not receive an invoice from us at any point.
The lender pays us a commission after your loan settles. You receive our Credit Guide, which sets out how we are remunerated, before we ask you for a single document. Read the rest of this page for what that arrangement means and what it is fair to ask any broker about it, including us.
The short answer
For most standard residential home loans in Sydney, a mortgage broker costs the borrower nothing. As ASIC’s Moneysmart puts it, lenders generally pay brokers a commission for distributing their products, so you do not pay them directly, and the commission is a percentage of the loan amount with both an upfront and an ongoing component. Brokers must give you information about the commissions they may receive. Across the market, fees are more common on complex, commercial and SMSF lending, and where a broker does charge you they must set the fee out in a written quote that you sign before any work starts. Intellect Finance charges no fee on any file, of any type. The accurate framing is not that broking is costless. It is that you are not the one holding the invoice, and 2 features of how brokers are paid are fair to ask about before you start.
The short answer, and what it leaves out
Search this question and almost every result gives you the same 4 words: it is free. True, verifiable, and the least useful thing anyone can tell you about how broking works.
The fuller version. You will not receive an invoice from a broker on a standard residential home loan. The lender pays them after your loan settles. Nothing comes off your loan amount, nothing appears on your repayment as a broker line item, and the arrangement has to be disclosed to you in writing before the broker gives you any credit assistance.
Money that appears from nowhere never appears from nowhere. The commission comes out of the lender’s margin. That margin is funded by what borrowers pay in interest and fees across every loan on the lender’s book. The cost of distributing home loans in Australia has not vanished. It has moved somewhere you cannot see or itemise.
Free is accurate at the invoice level and incomplete at the system level. Ask what the payment structure rewards, not what it costs you.
That reframe changes which questions are useful. Two structural features are the ones to understand before you sit down with anyone. Trail commission rewards your broker for keeping you where you are. Clawback penalises them if you leave early. Neither is sinister and both are ordinary. Neither is on many broker websites either.
The rest of this page covers what lenders actually pay and how much the published figures disagree, the lending where a fee applies, the legal protections over the arrangement, and how to check every part of it without taking anyone’s word for it.
Where the money comes from
A lender has 2 ways to acquire a home loan customer. Directly, through branches, call centres, its own marketing and its own staff. Or through the broker channel, paying a commission per settled loan.
Both cost money. Direct channel costs are fixed and invisible to you: premises, salaries, technology, advertising. The broker channel cost is variable and paid per outcome. The lender only pays when a loan settles, which is one reason lenders have leaned into it.
The shift has been substantial, and it is worth seeing at full length rather than as a single year-on-year comparison. On Cotality data commissioned by the MFAA and published on 3 September 2026, brokers facilitated a record 81.6 per cent of all new residential home loans in the June 2026 quarter. That is up from 81.0 per cent in the March 2026 quarter, 77.6 per cent in June 2025, and 73.7 per cent in June 2024. Over 8 years the share has risen 27.7 percentage points, from 53.9 per cent in June 2018.
In dollar terms, brokers facilitated $139.08 billion in new home lending in the June 2026 quarter, an increase of $17.49 billion on the same period in 2025 and the highest volume recorded for any June quarter. The MFAA also notes that Australia is now one of only 3 countries globally, alongside the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, where brokers facilitate more than 80 per cent of mortgage lending.
What that means for you. Not that the industry is winning. That the broker channel is now the main distribution channel for Australian home loans, so lender pricing, policy and service levels are increasingly built around it. It also means the channel is large enough to attract regulatory attention, which is where the disclosure obligations below come from.
Scale is not quality, and none of it tells you whether a particular broker will do a good job. It does explain why free-to-you is stable rather than a promotion that might disappear. It is how most of the market now runs.
What lenders pay, with sources
Most pages state a precise commission range as settled fact. It is not settled, and an honest answer beats a confident wrong one.
Commission varies by lender, by loan type, and by the aggregator agreement the broker works under. Published sources disagree. Here is what the more credible ones say, with the vintage attached so you can weigh them.
| Payment | Reported range | Source and vintage | Paid when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront commission | Around 0.62% average | ASIC Report 516, 16 March 2017. Dated, and the only market-wide regulator review. | Once, on settlement |
| Upfront commission | Roughly 0.65% to 0.70%, plus GST | Industry-published current ranges. Not regulator-verified. | Once, on settlement |
| Trail commission | Around 0.15% per annum average | ASIC Report 516, 16 March 2017. | Monthly, while the loan is open |
| Trail commission | Roughly 0.165% to 0.275% per annum, plus GST | Industry-published current ranges. Not regulator-verified. | Monthly, while the loan is open |
| Clawback | Some or all of the upfront returned | Each lender’s own policy. No market standard. | On early discharge, commonly within 1 to 2 years |
| Cost to you | Nil on standard residential lending | Disclosed in the broker’s Credit Guide before credit assistance. | Not applicable |
Two things to pull out of that. The regulator’s figures come from a review published in March 2017, so they are nearly a decade old, and anyone presenting them as current is stretching. And the industry-published ranges sit above the regulator’s historic averages, which may reflect real movement, or may reflect that the businesses publishing them benefit from the number looking substantial. Treat both as indicative.
For the figure that applies to you there is one reliable source. Ask your broker for their Credit Guide. They are legally required to provide it before giving credit assistance, and Moneysmart is explicit that brokers must give you information about the commissions they may receive. A broker who cannot produce one, or who gets vague about what is in it, has answered a different question for you.
Trail cuts both ways
Trail is the payment a lender makes to a broker every month while your loan stays open and performing. It stops if you refinance away, pay the loan out, or fall into arrears.
The industry explanation is that trail funds ongoing service, and that holds up. It is why a broker still takes your call 3 years after settlement, still runs a review, and still has a financial reason to care whether your loan is behaving. A bank employee was rewarded once for writing the loan and may have moved branches or left the industry since.
The other half is less flattering, and most broker websites leave it out. Trail means your broker earns more the longer you stay exactly where you are. That is an alignment problem at the precise moment you ask them whether to move.
Not a reason to distrust brokers. A reason to ask. A broker who names the tension before you raise it is telling you more than one who insists their incentives line up perfectly with yours, because nobody’s do.
Clawback, and the conflict that goes unmentioned
Clawback is where the lender reclaims some or all of the upfront commission if the loan is discharged early. The window is commonly the first 1 to 2 years, and many lenders use a sliding scale, so a discharge at month 6 costs the broker more than one at month 20.
You are not charged for clawback. It does not touch your loan, your rate or your repayments. Most explanations stop there and conclude that it does not affect you. That is the part to push on.
It affects you indirectly, because it gives a broker a financial reason to be unenthusiastic about a refinance inside the window. If a broker has to hand back the entire upfront commission on a loan they wrote 9 months ago, and gets nothing for arranging the replacement beyond the new loan’s commission, the incentive runs one way.
The question to ask: does clawback apply to you on my loan, and how does it affect your view? You are not accusing anyone of anything. You are asking them to put a known conflict on the table so you can weigh what they tell you.
A good broker answers without flinching, and will say when staying put is the better call. Clawback has been argued over inside the industry for years, with brokers calling the policies disproportionate and some lenders softening their terms. That debate is not yours to settle. Knowing the mechanism exists is enough.
Want a straight answer on what it would cost you?
Book a free 15 minute call. You will get our Credit Guide, which sets out how we are paid, before you send us a single document. No fee, no obligation, whatever the loan type.
The ways brokers charge
Not every broker works on commission alone. A minority charge the borrower directly, and they do it in several different shapes. Knowing the shapes is useful, because a charge described as one thing at the first meeting can turn out to be another by the time documents arrive.
| What it is called | What it actually covers | Where you tend to meet it |
|---|---|---|
| Consultation or strategy fee | Payment for the advice session itself, sometimes for a written plan, whether or not a loan follows | Brokers positioning themselves as advisers rather than loan arrangers, and some who work with investors on portfolio structuring |
| Fee for service, commission rebated | A flat or hourly fee instead of commission. The broker rebates the lender commission to you, or takes none, and bills you for the work | A small number of brokers who market the model as removing the conflict that commission creates |
| Broker fee on top of commission | A charge in addition to what the lender pays, usually justified by the hours a file takes | Commercial, SMSF, development and specialist lending |
| Application, packaging or documentation fee | A charge for preparing and submitting the application | Non-conforming and specialist lending, and occasionally on small loans |
| Success or engagement fee | Payable on settlement, or in some arrangements payable upfront and non-refundable regardless of outcome | Commercial and complex transactions. The refundability is the part to pin down |
| Cancellation or clawback recovery fee | A charge passed to you if the loan is discharged early and the broker’s commission is clawed back | Rare in residential lending, and worth asking about before you sign anything |
None of these is improper. A broker who charges a fee-for-service and rebates commission has a defensible argument that their incentives are cleaner than a commission-only broker’s. A commercial broker charging for 80 hours on a file is charging for 80 hours of work. The problem is never that a fee exists. It is a fee you did not know about.
What the rules require if a broker charges you
ASIC’s Moneysmart guidance on using a mortgage broker sets out the position plainly. Lenders generally pay brokers a commission for distributing their products, so you do not pay them directly. Where a broker does charge you, they should clearly communicate it and set out the proposed fee in a written quote, you must sign that quote before the broker can provide services and request payment, and a broker is not entitled to request payment of a fee before providing their services.
So the test is simple. A written quote, in your hands, signed by you, before anybody does anything. If a fee is being described verbally, described as standard, or described as something that will be sorted out later, those rules are being ignored.
Moneysmart adds one more step people rarely take: if a broker proposes to charge you a fee and you are not sure whether it is reasonable, ask around or look online to see whether other brokers charge fees for similar services and how much. A fee is a price like any other and it is quotable.
And the 2 questions Moneysmart suggests you ask are still the 2 to ask: how do you get paid for the advice you are giving me, and does that differ between lenders.
What Intellect Finance charges
Nothing. Not one of the 6 charges in that table. Not for the first conversation, not for the strategy session, not for the comparison across lenders, not for preparing or submitting the application, and nothing at settlement. No consultation fee, no advice fee, no packaging fee, no success fee, no engagement fee.
That holds across every file we take on, not only the straightforward residential ones. Commercial, SMSF and asset finance included, which is where most of the market does charge and where a fee would be easiest to justify. We take the lender commission and that is the whole of our remuneration. Our Credit Guide sets it out before you have sent us anything.
Whether that is a reason to use us is a separate question, and the honest answer is that it should not be the main one. Free is a floor, not a case. What matters more is whether the broker knows which lender says yes to your file, and whether they will tell you when the answer is to stay where you are.
When a broker does charge you
The lending where a fee is more likely, and why:
- Complex or non-standard applications. Where the file needs substantial extra research, structuring, or negotiation with lenders outside the mainstream.
- Commercial lending. Many commercial transactions carry a broker fee alongside lender commission, because the work differs materially from a residential file.
- SMSF lending. Structurally complex, compliance heavy, and narrow in terms of which lenders participate.
- Specialist or non-conforming scenarios. Where credit history, income structure or the security property sits outside standard lender appetite.
- Very small loans. Where a percentage of a small balance does not cover the hours the file takes.
What matters is not whether a fee exists but when you hear about it. Any fee should be disclosed in writing before work begins, not once you are committed and the settlement clock is running. An upfront fee on a straightforward residential home loan is unusual, and you should ask why.
Red flags on the cost conversation
| Warning sign | Why it matters | Ask instead |
|---|---|---|
| No Credit Guide provided | It must be given before credit assistance. Its absence is a compliance failure. | Can I have your Credit Guide before we go any further? |
| Vague on how they are paid | The easiest question on the list to answer honestly. Hesitation tells you something. | Who pays you, how much, and could any fee apply to me? |
| Insists there is no conflict at all | Trail and clawback both create tension. Denying it means they have not thought about it or would rather you did not. | Does clawback apply on this loan, and how does that affect your view? |
| Fee raised late in the process | Disclosure after you are committed removes your ability to walk away cheaply, and a fee requires a signed quote before work starts. | Confirm in writing now whether anything will be charged to me. |
| One lender, no comparison | Moneysmart says a broker should present more than one option and should show you loans from other lenders so you can compare. | What else did you consider, and why not those? |
| No verifiable licence details | Licensing and dispute-scheme membership are your baseline protections. | What is your credit licence number and who is your dispute scheme? |
Worth adding one line from Moneysmart that borrowers forget under pressure: you do not have to take the first loan you are offered. If you are not happy with any option, you can ask the broker to find alternatives, and if you have a preference for a particular lender they should still show you loans from others so you can compare.
What protects you, and what does not
Three things sit over the commission arrangement, and all 3 get overstated. Here is what each actually does.
Best Interests Duty
Since 1 January 2021, mortgage brokers have been legally required to act in the best interests of the consumer when providing credit assistance. The obligation sits in the National Consumer Credit Protection Act, ASIC’s guidance is in Regulatory Guide 273, and Moneysmart states it plainly: mortgage brokers must act in your best interests when suggesting a loan for you. Where the broker’s interests conflict with yours, yours must be prioritised.
The detail that matters is who it does not cover. Best Interests Duty applies to brokers. It does not apply to a bank employee arranging that bank’s own product. That is a structural difference between the 2 channels and one of the few comparative statements in this area that can be made plainly, because it is a matter of law rather than marketing.
What it does not do is guarantee an outcome. It is a conduct standard, not a warranty. No broker can compel a lender to approve a loan and no duty changes that. ASIC is currently running a review of how well brokers comply with the duty in practice, which an ASIC Commissioner described as underway in a speech on 22 July 2026.
The Credit Guide
A broker must give you a Credit Guide before providing credit assistance. It sets out who they are, who licenses them or who they represent, how they are remunerated, and how to complain. It is the most useful document in this entire conversation and almost no one reads it. Read it.
External dispute resolution
Credit licensees must be members of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, which gives you a free external dispute pathway if something goes wrong and the broker’s own complaints process does not fix it. Moneysmart sets out the order: raise it with the broker, then complain to the business in writing, then take it to AFCA. Confirm membership rather than assuming it.
Check all of it yourself
Everything above can be verified without trusting anybody, which is more than can be said for most claims in this industry. It takes about 10 minutes.
- Ask for the Credit Guide, in writing, before you send documents. It tells you how the broker is paid and whether a fee could apply to you.
- Look up the licence on ASIC’s Professional Registers. Every broker either holds an Australian Credit Licence or operates as a credit representative under someone else’s. Both are searchable under the Credit Licensee and Credit Representative registers. Ask for the number and check it.
- Check industry body membership. Commonly the MFAA or the FBAA. Both maintain member directories.
- Confirm AFCA membership. Your free dispute pathway, and not optional for licensees.
- Ask the clawback question if you are refinancing soon. Does clawback apply to you on this loan, and does it change what you would recommend.
If a broker gets uncomfortable with any of those 5, that discomfort is the most useful thing you will take from the meeting. Our guide to the questions worth asking a mortgage broker covers the rest of a first conversation.
So is free worth anything?
Free things are often worth what you pay for them, so the question is fair.
The value of a broker has little to do with price and almost everything to do with lender policy. Lenders differ enormously in what they accept: how they read self-employed income, how they treat existing debts and card limits, what they make of a particular property type, how they handle a short employment history or a recently started business, and which specific buildings and postcodes they will not lend against at all.
That policy knowledge is the product. A sharp rate on a loan you cannot get approved for is worth nothing. An application sent to a lender whose policy was never going to fit costs you time you may not have, and leaves an enquiry on your credit file for the trouble.
A broker is not a cheaper number. A broker is knowing which lender says yes to your file before you spend 3 weeks finding out the hard way.
There are also cases where going direct to your own bank is the better move, and we would rather say so. A long relationship with your lender, a straightforward file, and a rate you have already benchmarked and are confident about all reduce what a broker adds. A good broker tells you that instead of manufacturing a reason to be involved. Our guide to whether a broker gets a better deal than the bank works through where each channel actually wins.
What a broker cannot do is guarantee approval, guarantee a rate, or promise a timeframe. None of those sit within their control. Anyone suggesting otherwise is overpromising, and that deserves more of your attention than any commission disclosure.
Read Intellect Finance’s Google reviews
One way to sense-check any broker is to read what previous clients said rather than what the broker says about themselves. Here are the reviews, live and unedited from our Google Business Profile. Read them the way you would read any broker’s reviews, looking for practical detail rather than the star count.
These reviews reflect other clients’ experiences. They are not a promise of any particular outcome for your loan, which will always depend on your circumstances and the lender’s assessment.
Frequently Asked
Broker Cost and Commission Questions
What borrowers ask once they stop accepting “it’s free” as a complete answer.
How much does it cost to use a mortgage broker in Sydney?
For most standard residential home loans, nothing. The lender pays the broker a commission once the loan settles, and that arrangement must be disclosed in the broker’s Credit Guide before any credit assistance is provided. Across the market a fee is more likely on complex, commercial or SMSF lending, and any fee must be set out in a written quote you sign before work begins. Intellect Finance charges clients no fee on any loan type. Ask any broker the question directly at the first meeting rather than assuming either way.
If the broker is free, who is actually paying for it?
The lender, out of its margin. That margin is funded by what borrowers pay in interest and fees across the lender’s whole book. So broking is free at the invoice level and not costless at the system level: the cost of distributing home loans has moved somewhere you cannot itemise rather than disappeared. This is not a scandal, it is how most distribution works. It just means the useful question is what the payment structure rewards rather than what it costs you.
What commission does a mortgage broker earn in Australia?
It varies by lender, loan type and aggregator agreement, and published figures disagree. ASIC’s Report 516, published in March 2017, reported average upfront commission around 0.62 per cent and average trail around 0.15 per cent per annum, but those are nearly a decade old. Industry-published current ranges sit higher, at roughly 0.65 to 0.70 per cent upfront and 0.165 to 0.275 per cent trail plus GST, and are not regulator-verified. The only figure that applies to your broker is the one in their Credit Guide.
What is trail commission and does it work for or against me?
Both, which is why it is worth understanding. Trail is a monthly payment from the lender while your loan stays open and performing, and it stops if you refinance away or fall into arrears. In your favour, it funds the reason a broker still takes your call years after settlement and still has a financial interest in your loan behaving. Against you, it means your broker earns more the longer you stay put, which is an alignment problem at exactly the moment you ask whether to move.
What is clawback and should I care about it as a borrower?
Clawback is the lender reclaiming some or all of the upfront commission if a loan is discharged early, commonly within the first 1 to 2 years and often on a sliding scale. You are not charged for it and it does not touch your rate or repayments. It matters indirectly: it gives a broker a financial reason to be unenthusiastic about a refinance inside that window. If you are considering refinancing early, ask your broker whether clawback applies on your loan and how it affects their recommendation.
When does a mortgage broker actually charge a fee?
Most often on commercial, SMSF, specialist or non-conforming lending, on files needing substantial extra structuring, and sometimes on very small loans where a percentage of the balance does not cover the hours. A fee on a straightforward residential home loan is unusual and worth questioning. Wherever a fee applies, it must be set out in a written quote that you sign before the broker provides services, and the broker cannot request payment before providing them.
What is Best Interests Duty and does it apply to bank staff?
It requires mortgage brokers to act in your best interests when providing credit assistance, and to prioritise your interests where theirs conflict. It has applied since 1 January 2021 under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act, with ASIC’s guidance in Regulatory Guide 273. It applies to brokers and not to a bank employee arranging their own employer’s product, which is a genuine structural difference between the channels. It is a conduct standard rather than a guarantee: no duty compels a lender to approve anything.
Do brokers have to show me more than one loan?
Moneysmart’s guidance is that the broker should present you with more than one option, explain how each works and what it costs, and explain why it is in your best interests. You do not have to take the first loan offered, and if you are unhappy with the options you can ask for alternatives. Even where you have a preference for a particular lender, the broker should show you loans from others so you can compare. A recommendation you cannot see the alternatives to is not really a recommendation.
How do I verify what my broker is paid?
Ask for their Credit Guide in writing before you send any documents, since it must be provided before credit assistance and sets out how they are remunerated. Then check the licence on ASIC’s Professional Registers under Credit Licensee or Credit Representative, confirm AFCA membership, and check MFAA or FBAA membership if they claim it. That is about 10 minutes of work and it does not require taking anyone’s word for anything.
What share of Australian home loans go through brokers?
A record 81.6 per cent of all new residential home loans in the June 2026 quarter, on Cotality data commissioned by the MFAA and published in September 2026, representing $139.08 billion in lending. That is up from 77.6 per cent a year earlier and 53.9 per cent in June 2018. Australia is one of only 3 countries globally, with the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, where brokers arrange more than 80 per cent of mortgage lending. Scale is not quality and it says nothing about any individual broker, but it does explain why the free-to-you model is stable rather than promotional.
The honest bottom line
Take the reframe if you take nothing else. A mortgage broker will not send you an invoice on a standard home loan, and that is true rather than a marketing line. Nothing in financial services is free in every direction though. The commission is real, it comes from the lender’s margin, and that margin is funded by borrowers collectively.
So the useful question is not what this will cost you. You already know. The useful questions are how this person is paid, what that structure rewards, and whether they told you before you asked. Trail rewards keeping you in place. Clawback discourages moving you early. Neither makes a broker untrustworthy and both should be said out loud.
A broker who volunteers all that unprompted is showing you something a rate comparison cannot. Ask for the Credit Guide, check the licence on ASIC’s registers, and watch whether the answers get more specific or more evasive. That tells you more than any commission percentage on any website, this one included.
Joseph Sukkar
Joseph has worked in Australian finance for more than 25 years and has run Intellect Finance from central Penrith since 2005, through the period in which broking went from a minority channel to arranging more than 4 in 5 Australian home loans. Intellect Finance charges clients no fee on any loan type, and the Credit Guide setting out how we are paid comes before we ask for anything. More about the team.
Sources
ASIC Moneysmart, Using a mortgage broker, last updated 4 September 2026, for the position that lenders generally pay brokers a commission for distributing their products so you do not pay them directly, that commission is a percentage of the loan amount with upfront and ongoing components, that brokers must provide information about commissions they may receive, that a broker charging you must set the fee out in a written quote which you sign before services are provided and cannot request payment beforehand, that brokers must act in your best interests, that a broker should present more than one option and show loans from other lenders, the suggested questions to ask, the ASIC Professional Registers check, and the complaint pathway ending at AFCA. moneysmart.gov.au
Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia, Mortgage broker market share reaches record 81.6 per cent, 3 September 2026, reporting Cotality data commissioned by the MFAA, for the record 81.6 per cent share of all new residential home loans in the June 2026 quarter, the comparisons with 81.0 per cent in March 2026, 77.6 per cent in June 2025, 73.7 per cent in June 2024 and 53.9 per cent in June 2018, the $139.08 billion of new home lending facilitated in the quarter, and the observation that Australia is one of 3 countries globally where brokers facilitate more than 80 per cent of mortgage lending. mfaa.com.au
ASIC, Report 516 Review of mortgage broker remuneration, released 16 March 2017, cited for the historic market-wide average upfront and trail commission figures shown in the table. asic.gov.au
ASIC, Regulatory Guide 273 Mortgage brokers: Best interests duty, and the speech The best interests duty: a blueprint for building trust delivered by Commissioner Alan Kirkland on 22 July 2026, for the scope of the duty and for ASIC’s review of broker compliance being underway at that date. asic.gov.au
Important disclosures, general advice warning and licensing
General information only. This article is general information only and does not constitute financial, credit, legal or tax advice. It does not take your personal or financial circumstances into account. Before acting on any information here, consider whether it is appropriate to your objectives, financial situation and needs.
About the commission figures shown. Broker remuneration varies by lender, loan type and aggregator agreement, and no single published range applies across the market. The averages attributed to ASIC come from Report 516, Review of mortgage broker remuneration, released 16 March 2017, and are historic rather than current. We were not able to re-verify those specific averages against the text of the report in preparing this page, and they should be treated as indicative only. The higher ranges are published by industry sources and are not regulator-verified. The figures that apply to any particular broker are set out in that broker’s own Credit Guide. Nothing here states Intellect Finance’s specific commission arrangements, which are disclosed in our Credit Guide.
About the market share figures. Broker market share and lending volume figures are Cotality data commissioned by the MFAA and published on 3 September 2026 for the June 2026 quarter. Market share figures are revised periodically and reflect a point in time. They describe the market in aggregate and say nothing about any individual broker.
About the fee descriptions. The charges described are a general account of practices across the broking market. They are not a description of any particular broker’s arrangements and are not an allegation about anyone. Where a broker charges a fee, the requirements described are as set out in ASIC’s Moneysmart guidance, summarised here in general terms rather than reproduced.
Best Interests Duty. Best Interests Duty applies to mortgage brokers in relation to the credit assistance they provide, at the time it is provided, under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009. It is a conduct standard rather than a guarantee of outcome, does not override lender policy, and is not an ongoing obligation to monitor a loan after settlement. ASIC’s review of broker compliance with the duty is described here as an ASIC Commissioner described it on 22 July 2026, and we express no view on what it may find.
Lender policies vary and change. Borrowing capacity, deposit requirements, acceptable documentation, approval timeframes, clawback terms and commission arrangements differ between lenders, are subject to each lender’s own assessment, and change without notice. This page names no lenders and publishes no interest rates. No broker can guarantee loan approval, a rate, or a timeframe.
What we charge you. Nothing, on any loan type. No arrangement fee for residential, commercial, corporate, asset, SMSF or personal lending, no fee for complex or specialist lending, and no clawback recovery fee if a loan is discharged early. Lenders pay us a commission on settlement, disclosed to you in writing in our Credit Guide before we provide credit assistance. This statement describes Intellect Finance only. Other brokers charge fees, in the forms described on this page, and their arrangements are set out in their own Credit Guides.
Other professionals. Tax questions, including deductibility and structuring, to your accountant or a registered tax agent. Self-managed super fund questions require a licensed financial adviser and an SMSF specialist, not a credit licensee. Legal questions, including contracts of sale and guarantee documents, to your solicitor or conveyancer. If you are having difficulty meeting repayments, contact your lender’s hardship team, and free independent help is available from the National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007.
About the reviews shown. The reviews displayed on this page are genuine reviews published by clients on Intellect Finance’s Google Business Profile, shown live via a third-party reviews widget. They reflect those individuals’ own experiences and are not a promise of any particular outcome.
Intellect Finance Pty Ltd holds Australian Credit Licence 390611 and is a member of the MFAA and AFCA. Lending criteria, fees and terms apply. Article checked 10 September 2026.
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