Broker guide
Buying Mortgage Broker Leads in Australia 2026
Buying mortgage broker leads in Australia? Check consent, qualification, exclusivity, refunds and trial cost before measuring appointments or settlements.
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Buying mortgage broker leads in Australia works only as a small, capped trial with a supplier that can show four things for every lead. You need the borrower’s consent record, the ad they responded to, the number of brokers who received their details and the refund terms that apply.
Your brokerage carries the compliance risk of a bought lead. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) says businesses that buy marketing lists can’t outsource their spam and telemarketing obligations. A supplier’s missing consent record becomes your problem on the first call.
Home loan leads are sold as enquiries, qualified appointments or exclusive referrals. Whichever form you buy, judge the trial against your brokerage’s own enquiry numbers. If you’d prefer to build enquiries you own, the lead generation guide covers that route.
Identify What is Sold
Before you compare prices, work out which of these three forms the offer sells. A mortgage lead is a borrower’s contact details and loan details, collected by someone else and passed to a broker. The three types differ in who screens the borrower and how many brokers get the same details.
| Offer type | What you receive | Screening before you get it | Who else receives it | Ask the supplier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enquiry | Contact details and the borrower’s form answers | Only the form questions, answered by the borrower | One or several brokers, as the offer states | How many brokers get each enquiry, and how soon after the borrower submits it? |
| Qualified appointment | A booked call or meeting with a borrower who passed set criteria | A supplier’s caller or form checks criteria such as loan purpose, loan size and location | No other broker, if the offer says the appointment is exclusive | Which criteria were checked, who checked them and what counts as a no-show? |
| Exclusive referral | One borrower introduced to your brokerage only | Whatever the referrer asked before introducing them | No other broker | Is the referrer paid per lead or per settlement, and has the borrower been told? |
Suppliers selling pre-qualified or qualified mortgage leads describe their own screening with those words. No lender has assessed the borrower at that point. Ask for the exact criteria, such as refinance only, loans over $400,000 or a Melbourne-only feed, and who confirmed each answer.
Check the Promise Against Your Panel
Read the exact ad and landing page the borrower saw before you accept a purchased enquiry. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) issued its advertising guide (RG 234) in June 2026, and it names lead generators among the promoters it covers. It says credit ads shouldn’t use terms such as “guaranteed acceptance” or “pre-approved”, because each application still needs an individual assessment.
Compare that promise with what your brokerage can deliver. An ad promising 95% loans for self-employed borrowers sends you people who expect an outcome your lender panel might not offer. Check that the loan type also sits within the credit activities your Australian credit licence or authorisation covers.
To test a typical enquiry against lender policy, describe its scenario in Bulma’s Scenario Planner. It checks the scenario against 52+ lenders’ policies and groups them by policy fit. You can then see which covered lenders, including any on your panel, could meet the ad’s promise.
What to Check Before You Buy Mortgage Leads
Get these four answers in writing from any supplier before you pay for a lead.
- Where each lead came from, including the website or campaign and the consent wording the borrower accepted.
- How many brokers receive each lead, and whether the supplier resells it later.
- A consent record for any lead you ask about, showing who consented, when, how and to contact from whom.
- Which leads count as invalid, the window for refund claims and how disputes are settled.
Inspect Lead Provenance
Lead provenance is the record of where a borrower’s details came from and what the borrower agreed to. Document four things for every lead you receive: the consent source, the advertised promise, the screening criteria and the number of recipients.
| Record | What to keep | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Consent source | The form address, the consent wording with its date and time, plus the businesses the consent names | Whether the consent covers a call or message from your brokerage |
| Advertised promise | Screenshots of the ad and landing page as the borrower saw them | Which expectation you’ll need to correct on the first call |
| Screening criteria | The questions asked, the answers given and who checked them | Which details are verified and which are self-reported |
| Number of recipients | How many businesses received the details, and what kind | Whether you’re competing on the first call, and whether consent covered every recipient |
Consent for Calls and Messages
ACMA’s 2024 statement of expectations on consent says you stay responsible for consent when a third party collects it. ACMA expects you to oversee that third party’s records, which should show the method, the terms and the date and time of consent. It treats telemarketing consent older than three months as stale, unless the borrower agreed to a longer period.
The same statement says a call the borrower requested, made within a reasonable time of the request, is generally not a telemarketing call. A lead delivered within minutes, from a form that told the borrower a broker would call, supports that position. An old list of numbers doesn’t.
Text messages and emails need consent before you send them. ACMA’s spam guidance says you must be able to prove that consent, including when you bought the list.
Privacy Obligations
The Privacy Act 1988 adds duties once you hold a bought lead. Under Australian Privacy Principle 5 (APP 5), you take reasonable steps to tell the borrower who you are and how their details were collected. Those steps happen at collection or as soon as practicable afterwards.
Where the direct marketing rule in APP 7 applies, a borrower can ask you for the source of their details. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) says you’d generally answer within 30 days. You can’t answer without the provenance record.
A brokerage with annual turnover of $3 million or less is generally outside the Privacy Act. The OAIC’s small business guidance counts paying to collect personal information as trading in it. A small business that trades in personal information without the person’s consent is covered whatever its turnover.
The Supplier’s Credit Status
Ask the supplier what lets it pass borrowers’ details to brokers for a fee. ASIC’s Regulatory Guide 203 (RG 203), issued October 2017 and amended May 2025, treats a paid referrer as likely to be acting as an intermediary. That role is a credit activity under the licensing rules.
RG 203’s upstream referral exemption lets a referrer pass on a consumer’s name, contact details and loan purpose without a credit licence. The referrer must meet these conditions.
- It has a written referral agreement with your brokerage.
- The referral is incidental to another business it runs.
- The consumer consents to their details being passed on.
- It passes the details within five business days.
- It tells the consumer about any commission it receives.
RG 203 says the exemption doesn’t apply to a business whose main activity is contacting people to pass their details on. Ask a dedicated lead seller which licence, authorisation or exemption it relies on, and keep the answer in the supplier file. If your brokerage signs a written referral agreement, RG 203 notes extra licence conditions for you, including a register of referrers.
Price a Small Trial
Price a trial by adding the lead fees, subtracting the refunds you can actually claim and adding the staff time every lead uses. Invalid leads still use staff time, because you only find out they’re invalid after you try to contact them.
This fictional trial buys 20 mortgage refinance leads from a supplier at $60 per enquiry. The figures show the arithmetic and aren’t market prices. All amounts exclude goods and services tax (GST).
| Line | Assumption | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Lead fees | 20 enquiries at $60 each | $1,200 |
| Refunds | 3 enquiries meet the supplier’s invalid-lead rule | -$180 |
| Response work | 30 minutes per enquiry, including refunded ones, at $50 an hour of assistant time | $500 |
| Follow-up | 4 fact finds of 2 hours each, at $100 an hour of broker time | $800 |
| Trial cost | $2,320 |
The trial cost works out at $580 per fact find, against a headline price of $60 per enquiry. The supplier’s invalid-lead rule in this example covers wrong numbers, duplicates sent within 60 days and borrowers who deny making the enquiry. Claims must reach the supplier within three business days of delivery, so a claim lodged on day five earns no refund.
Response work covers up to four call attempts, the first conversation and the customer relationship management (CRM) entry for each lead. Follow-up covers the fact find and any messages afterwards, sent only to borrowers whose consent covers ongoing contact from your brokerage.
Fund the trial from the acquisition budget in your marketing plan, so its cost sits beside your other channels.
Set Continue, Change and Stop Conditions
Write the decision rules into the trial agreement before the first lead arrives, so nobody can argue the result afterwards. Base each threshold on your own channels, such as the fact-find rate from your website enquiries.
| Decision | Condition in this fictional trial |
|---|---|
| Stop at once | The supplier can’t produce a consent record within two business days of your request |
| Stop at once | A lead went to more brokers than the offer stated |
| Change the terms | More than 5 of the 20 leads fall outside your lender panel or licence scope, so the screening criteria need narrowing |
| Change the terms | The supplier rejects refund claims that meet its own invalid-lead rule |
| Continue | Cost per fact find is at or below your website enquiries’ cost, and no borrower expected an approval the ad implied |
Trace One Fictional Lead
This fictional enquiry shows who receives the data at each step, the permission relied on and what the broker must record or correct.
| Step | Who holds the data | Permission relied on | What the broker records or corrects |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday 7:42 pm: Mia completes a “check your refinance rate” form and ticks an unticked box agreeing that up to three broker partners can call her | The supplier and its form provider | Mia’s express consent to calls from up to three brokers | A copy of the form, the consent wording and the time stamp |
| 7:45 pm: The supplier’s call centre phones Mia to confirm her answers | The supplier and its call-centre contractor | The same consent | The screening answers: a $520,000 refinance, wage income and a wish to access equity |
| 7:50 pm: The supplier sends the lead to your brokerage and two others | The supplier and three brokerages | Consent names “broker partners”, not your brokerage | The number of recipients, and that the consent covers calls but not text messages |
| Wednesday 9:05 am: Your broker calls Mia | Your brokerage and its CRM | A call Mia requested, made within a reasonable time | Who you are, where her details came from and that no rate or approval exists yet |
Correct two limitations before you take a fact find. The form promised a rate, so explain that no lender has assessed Mia and that the lender sets the rate after applying its own assessment. Mia might also expect up to three calls, so tell her which supplier passed on her details and that two other brokers received them.
Give Mia your credit guide before the fact find, and apply the best interests duty as you would for any client. If she asks you to stop contacting her, remove her from your call and message lists.
Evaluate the Outcome
Judge the trial on what happened to every lead, recorded the same way each time and compared with your brokerage’s own channels. Record these measures in the CRM for each lead, and set targets from your own channels rather than industry averages.
| Measure | How to record it |
|---|---|
| Contactability | You reached the borrower within four attempts, and they confirmed making the enquiry |
| Duplication | The borrower was already in your CRM, or the supplier sent the lead twice |
| Suitability | The loan type and scenario fit your licence scope and lender panel |
| Misleading expectation | The borrower expected an approval, rate or outcome the ad implied |
| Appointment | A fact find was booked and held |
| Settlement | The loan settled, recorded against the trial lead whenever it happens |
Settlements arrive weeks after the trial ends, so decide on the trial’s appointments and keep tracking settlements afterwards. Compare each measure with your website or referral enquiries over the same period. The best mortgage leads for your brokerage are the ones whose consent, promise and scenario match what you can deliver.
When Cheap Leads Still Fail
This fictional second supplier sells 40 enquiries at $25 each, so the lead fees total $1,000. Thirty borrowers are contactable and 12 appointments are held, which puts lead fees at about $83 per appointment. The first supplier’s net lead fees came to $255 per fact find.
The appointment notes change the result. Five of the 12 borrowers want loans you can’t arrange, such as two car loans and three scenarios no lender on your panel accepts. Seven of the 12 believe they’re already approved, because the ad offered to “check your approval in 60 seconds”.
Three borrowers say they never asked to be contacted, and the supplier can’t produce consent records for two of them within two business days. That meets a stop condition, so the brokerage declines further supply despite the lower cost per appointment. Each corrected expectation also takes broker time and leaves a borrower who feels misled before the fact find begins.
Assess Asset-Finance Leads
An asset finance lead is usable only when it identifies a real asset, a purchase timetable and a business purpose. It also needs an applicant with authority to borrow and consent for broker contact.
| Detail | What the lead should show |
|---|---|
| Real asset | The make, model and seller, with a quote or invoice |
| Purchase timetable | When the borrower must pay for or take delivery of the asset |
| Business purpose | What the asset does in the business, with an active Australian Business Number (ABN) that ABN Lookup confirms |
| Applicant authority | A director or authorised signatory for a company, or the trustee for a trust |
| Consent | The same consent record as a home loan lead, naming broker contact |
Separate equipment purchases, working-capital requests and consumer car enquiries before you judge the lead against your actual service scope. RG 203 says the National Credit Code covers residential property investment loans and credit provided wholly or predominantly for personal, domestic or household purposes. Predominantly means more than half of the credit, and business-purpose credit sits outside the Code even for a sole trader.
| Enquiry | What the borrower wants | Under the National Credit Code | Fits your brokerage when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equipment purchase | Finance for a vehicle, machine or tool used in the business | Outside the Code when more than half of the credit is for business purposes | You arrange commercial asset finance with lenders that fund that equipment |
| Working-capital request | Cash for wages, stock or bills, with no asset to buy | Outside the Code when the purpose is business | You arrange business lending for working capital, secured or unsecured, with lenders that fund it |
| Consumer car enquiry | A car loan for personal use | Regulated credit, with responsible lending obligations | Your licence or authorisation covers car loans and you have lenders for them |
If your brokerage arranges only home loans, leave asset finance leads out of the trial order instead of paying for enquiries you’ll refer away. If you do arrange them, run them as a separate trial line with their own refund rules, so cheap car-loan enquiries can’t hide a weak home loan result.
