At a glance · MFAA Global Insights Report 2026
Six markets, five remuneration models, no winner
The MFAA’s first international research exercise, released 21 October 2026, compared Australia with five overseas broker markets.
The research, in numbers
Broker share of mortgage lending, as reported
Bar widths are indicative only. The report’s own disclaimer states that estimates of broker or intermediary market share “may not be directly comparable” between jurisdictions. Where a range is given, the bar reflects the midpoint of that range.
The finding that matters most
“The research found little evidence that one remuneration structure automatically produces superior consumer outcomes.”
MFAA, Global Insights Report 2026 — key insights
What the report says about trail
Standard here, rare elsewhere
Australia is “one of the few jurisdictions where ongoing trail commission remains a standard feature of broker remuneration”. In many overseas markets remuneration is “largely concentrated at origination”.
Variable rates, recurring reasons
The report attributes the difference to loan structure: “The prevalence of variable-rate lending creates ongoing customer engagement opportunities.” Fixed-rate markets concentrate the relationship at the transaction.
An opportunity, not a retainer
The report describes trail as supporting ongoing engagement opportunities. It does not describe it as a fee for a required ongoing service, and it draws no conclusion that trail produces better outcomes.
The Dutch case study — the one market that ran the experiment
The report’s own caution: “remuneration reform is rarely a standalone policy change.” It presents the Dutch experience as a case study, not a blueprint, and states its purpose “was not to identify a model that Australia should adopt”.
The broker takeaway
If commission design is not what separates strong broker markets from weak ones, the part of the trail argument that still carries weight is the ongoing engagement it is said to support — and that is evidenced one brokerage at a time, in file notes and CRM records. The number worth knowing this week is what share of your trail-paying clients had a documented review in the last 12 months.
The MFAA Found Little Evidence That Any Commission Model Produces Better Consumer Outcomes. In the Netherlands, Where Commissions Were Banned in 2013, Brokers Still Write About 80%
The MFAA’s first international research exercise compared Australia against five overseas markets. Two of its findings sit awkwardly beside the way the channel usually defends trail — and one of them points straight at what sits in your own file notes.
In this article
- What the MFAA actually published
- The finding that cuts both ways
- Trail is the outlier, and the report says why
- What a commission ban actually did in the Netherlands
- Where the report says the real advantage sits
- The scope-of-advice gap
- What this means on your files
- What to review this week
- What to watch next
On 21 October the Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia released Global Insights Report 2026: Lessons and Emerging Trends for Australia’s Mortgage Broking Industry, the association’s first international research exercise. It compares Australia with the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany across five domains: regulation and professional standards, broker remuneration and consumer value, data and technology, emerging risks, and the evolution of broker business models.
Most of the coverage has led on one line — that Australia’s trail commission is unusual by international standards. That is in the report. But it is not the finding that should hold a principal broker’s attention.
What the MFAA actually published
The research is qualitative, not a data study. The MFAA’s release says it drew on engagement with more than 30 stakeholders across 15 organisations, including regulators, industry associations, lenders, broker groups and technology providers. Australian Broker reported that those organisations included the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority and the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets; that detail appears in its coverage rather than in the MFAA’s own release.
The report is explicit about what it is not. Its stated objective “was not to identify a single ‘best’ model for mortgage broking”, and it says “the purpose of this research was not to identify a model that Australia should adopt”. Its own disclaimer warns that regulatory frameworks, market structures and data collection methods vary between jurisdictions, and that estimates of broker or intermediary market share “may not be directly comparable”. That caveat matters, because the share figures are the part most likely to be quoted loosely.
On the Australian number, there are two figures in circulation and they are not the same measure. The report’s foreword states that “Brokers now facilitate 81 per cent of residential home lending”, footnoted to an MFAA news item of 10 June 2026. The MFAA’s 21 October release and the trade coverage cite 81.6% of new residential home lending in the June 2026 quarter, drawn from Cotality data commissioned by the MFAA. Either way the direction is the same, but if you are quoting a share to a referral partner or in a submission, quote the one you can point to.
The finding that cuts both ways
Here is the sentence that should change how brokers argue about commission. The report states: “Importantly, the research found that remuneration structures alone do not determine the success of a broker market.” It goes further, finding “no direct relationship between any single remuneration model and broker market success”, and concluding that “the broader regulatory and competitive environment appears to play a more significant role in shaping outcomes”.
And then, in its key insights: “The research found little evidence that one remuneration structure automatically produces superior consumer outcomes.”
Why that is uncomfortable for both sides of the argument. The channel’s habitual defence of trail is that it funds ongoing service and therefore delivers better consumer outcomes than an origination-only model. The MFAA’s own research does not establish that. Equally, the familiar case for abolition — that lender-funded ongoing commission must be producing worse outcomes — is not established either. The report found strong broker markets operating under a variety of remuneration models.
That is not a small thing for an industry whose remuneration structure has been examined repeatedly over the past decade. The association that represents the channel has now put on paper that the outcomes case for any particular commission design is thin in both directions. Brokers who rely on “trail pays for the ongoing service, which is better for clients” as a self-evident proposition should notice that their own peak body’s international research treats it as a proposition requiring evidence.
Trail is the outlier, and the report says why
On the comparative point, the report is direct: “Australia is one of the few jurisdictions where ongoing trail commission remains a standard feature of broker remuneration,” and “In many overseas markets, remuneration is largely concentrated at origination.”
The explanation it offers is structural rather than cultural. “The prevalence of variable-rate lending creates ongoing customer engagement opportunities,” the report says. In markets dominated by fixed-rate lending, adviser relationships tend to concentrate around the initial transaction, because there is no rate to review for years at a stretch. Australia’s variable-rate book generates a recurring reason to go back to the client — a repricing conversation, a restructure, a refinance, a redraw question.
The report also records that international stakeholders were specifically interested in this: the role ongoing trail commissions play in supporting ongoing customer engagement, which “was viewed as unusual by many international participants”.
Read that carefully. The report describes trail as funding an opportunity for ongoing engagement. It does not describe trail as a fee for a required ongoing service, and nothing in Australian credit law turns trail into a retainer for an annual review. That gap — between what trail is commonly said to buy and what it actually obliges anyone to do — is where the channel is exposed, and it is exposed broker by broker rather than as a whole.
What a commission ban actually did in the Netherlands
The Dutch case study is the most useful part of the report for anyone trying to think about tail risk honestly, because it is the only market in the set that ran the experiment.
Before 2013, the report says, “Dutch mortgage advisers were typically remunerated through commissions” paid by lenders and product providers. Driven by mis-selling scandals and concerns about commission-based distribution of complex financial products, the Netherlands prohibited commissions on complex products including mortgages, with the full prohibition taking effect in 2013 after a multi-year transition “towards greater transparency and separation of product and advice costs”. Consumers now pay for mortgage advice directly, and lenders and advisers are required to charge separately for advice, inside what the report calls a “highly regulated framework governing fees and charges” in which fees must be “transparent and proportionate to the services provided”.
The outcome is the number that matters. Dutch brokers still facilitate approximately 80% of residential mortgage transactions. The report says “mortgage advisers continue to play a significant role in the Dutch home lending market”, and that fee transparency is high, with consumers generally understanding the cost of advice.
It is not a costless transition. The report notes that “Some mortgage advisers exited the market” — without quantifying how many — and records that there were initial concerns about consumer access to advice. Its own conclusion is a caution against reading the Dutch experience as a template in either direction: “remuneration reform is rarely a standalone policy change.”
The practical implication for an Australian brokerage. The strongest version of the “it would destroy the channel” argument does not survive contact with the Dutch data. A market that banned commissions outright still intermediates about four in five mortgages. What changed was who pays and what the adviser has to be able to show for the fee. If you are modelling downside scenarios for your business over a five-to-ten-year horizon, the realistic bad case is not the disappearance of broking. It is a model in which your revenue has to be justified to the person paying it, in writing, every time.
Where the report says the real advantage sits
Having found no winning remuneration design, the report locates the advantage elsewhere. “Trust emerged as one of the most important themes throughout the research,” it says, driven by “transparency, professionalism, disclosure and the quality of advice provided”. Its strongest formulation is this:
“For mortgage brokers, trust is not simply a by-product of good service. It is increasingly becoming one of the profession’s most valuable assets.”
MFAA, Global Insights Report 2026
It adds that “the rise of scams, cyber crime, fraud and misinformation is increasing the importance of trusted intermediaries”, and that “professionalism is increasingly viewed as a competitive advantage rather than a compliance exercise”. On the regulatory side it finds that “Australia’s regulatory framework compares strongly with international counterparts”, naming the combination of national licensing, responsible lending obligations, external dispute resolution, continuing professional development and the Best Interests Duty as what “provides a robust framework”. It also records that several international stakeholders expressed interest in Australia’s approach to broker regulation, and that none of the jurisdictions examined were actively reducing consumer protections.
For context on the direction of travel elsewhere: the report cites the United Kingdom’s Consumer Duty reforms as having “significantly expanded expectations regarding advice, suitability and consumer outcomes”, and notes that regulators across the set are “increasingly focused on professionalism, consumer outcomes, transparency”. Nobody is loosening.
The scope-of-advice gap
The second genuinely strategic finding has nothing to do with commission. The report says “Australia remains somewhat unique in maintaining a relatively specialised mortgage broking model”, with “a stronger distinction between mortgage advice and broader financial advice” than its peers.
Elsewhere, the mortgage is one conversation among several. In the UK, “Mortgage advisers commonly provide a broader range of financial services beyond mortgage advice”. In the Netherlands, advisers “frequently provide guidance extending beyond the mortgage transaction itself”. In Germany they “frequently operate within broader financial services businesses”, and the report says similar trends are evident in Canada and Germany. The examples it gives are insurance, protection products, retirement planning and other lending solutions.
The report’s forward-looking line is that “the long-term value proposition for Australian mortgage brokers could be linked to broader advice”. For an Australian brokerage that is a licensing and referral-structure question before it is a growth question, and the answer differs depending on whether you hold your own credit licence or operate as a credit representative, and on what your aggregator permits. Any move in this direction belongs in a conversation with your licensee before it belongs in a marketing plan.
On business models, the report records “greater consolidation and the emergence of larger, more sophisticated broker businesses” across several markets, but is careful that “scale alone was not identified as a determinant of success”. Smaller businesses “continue to perform strongly where they offer specialised expertise”, strong client relationships and clear value propositions. Its UK case study, Mortgage Advice Bureau, is offered to show that “growth and scale do not necessarily require a move away from relationship-based advice”.
What this means on your files
Put the three findings together and a practical conclusion falls out that is not in the report, but follows from it.
The comparative justification for trail that the MFAA’s international participants found interesting is ongoing customer engagement. The report could not find evidence that any commission structure delivers better consumer outcomes by itself. And the one market that removed commissions kept a broker channel, but attached a visible, itemised fee to advice that the consumer pays and can therefore interrogate.
In all three of those observations, the thing that does the work is demonstrable service after settlement. Not the existence of trail. Not the average trail rate. The record that a client was contacted, reviewed, repriced or restructured, and that it was written down.
Most brokerages already do some of this. Far fewer can produce it on demand across the whole book. If you cannot answer “how many of my trail-paying clients had a documented review in the last 12 months” from your CRM in under a minute, you are carrying the channel’s argument without being able to evidence your part of it. That is a commercial exposure in a remuneration review, and it is a retention exposure now — Australian Broker reported MFAA chief executive Anja Pannek putting around 72% of Australian broker business down to repeat clients and referrals, a figure that appears in that outlet’s coverage rather than in the report itself.
There is a compliance dimension too, and it is worth stating carefully. Best Interests Duty obligations under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009, which ASIC addresses in Regulatory Guide 273, attach to the provision of credit assistance. They are not a general servicing standard that trail switches on, and a post-settlement review is a different activity from the credit assistance that triggered the duty in the first place. Where a review leads to a recommendation — a refinance, a restructure, a new facility — you are back in credit assistance territory and the usual obligations apply to that recommendation. How your own records should evidence that boundary is a question for your licensee or aggregator compliance team, not something to infer from a market report.
What to review this week
- Run the coverage number. Pull the count of active trail-paying clients and the count with a logged contact or review in the last 12 months. Express it as a percentage. That single figure is your evidence base.
- Check what a “review” means in your CRM. A marketing email send is not a review. Decide what minimum record constitutes one — the conversation, the rate checked, the outcome, the date — and make it a field rather than a free-text note nobody can report on.
- Separate the two activities in your records. A service review and a recommendation that amounts to credit assistance are different events with different obligations. Confirm with your licensee how your file structure should distinguish them.
- Model the fee-for-advice downside. Not as a prediction, but as an exercise: if a portion of your revenue had to be invoiced to the client with the service itemised, which clients would pay, what would the invoice say, and what would you have to start recording now to be able to write it?
- Test the scope question against your licence. If broader advice is where the long-term value proposition is heading, establish what you can and cannot do under your current authorisation, and what a compliant referral arrangement would look like. Ask before you build.
Key takeaways
- The MFAA’s Global Insights Report 2026, released 21 October, found “little evidence that one remuneration structure automatically produces superior consumer outcomes” and “no direct relationship between any single remuneration model and broker market success”.
- Australia is described as “one of the few jurisdictions where ongoing trail commission remains a standard feature”. The report attributes this to the prevalence of variable-rate lending, which creates ongoing engagement opportunities.
- The Netherlands banned commissions on complex products including mortgages, with full effect from 2013, moving to a consumer-pays model. Brokers there still facilitate approximately 80% of residential mortgage transactions, though the report notes some advisers exited.
- The report locates competitive advantage in trust, professionalism and the regulatory environment rather than in commission design, and finds Australia’s framework “compares strongly with international counterparts”.
- It suggests Australian brokers’ long-term value proposition “could be linked to broader advice” — a licensing question to raise with your licensee before it is a growth strategy.
- The practical read-across: the defensible part of the trail argument is documented post-settlement service, which is recorded broker by broker rather than industry-wide.
What to watch next
Two things. First, the remaining instalments of the MFAA’s accompanying three-part video series with Anja Pannek and Naveen Ahluwalia: part one was released with the report on 21 October, with further episodes each fortnight. The MFAA’s release says part two covers what drives successful broker markets, including remuneration, professionalism, trust and consumer value — which is where any sharper position on commission would surface.
Second, whether this report starts getting cited in policy argument rather than industry commentary. A peak body’s own research finding no outcomes advantage for any commission model is a document that can be quoted by anyone, in any direction. It is better to have read it than to meet it secondhand.
None of this signals a change to how brokers are paid. The report is comparative research, not a consultation, and it does not announce one — nothing on your files changes this week because it was published. What has changed is the quality of the argument available to the channel — and the fact that the strongest remaining version of it rests on records that individual brokerages either keep or do not.
Frequently asked
Does this report mean trail commission is under review?
No. The report is comparative research published by an industry association, not a regulatory consultation or a government review. The MFAA states that its purpose “was not to identify a model that Australia should adopt”. There is no open consultation on broker remuneration arising from it.
Did the Netherlands’ commission ban reduce the role of brokers?
Not materially in terms of share, on the report’s account: Dutch brokers still facilitate approximately 80% of residential mortgage transactions, and the report says advisers “continue to play a significant role”. It does record that “Some mortgage advisers exited the market” during the transition, without quantifying how many, and that there were initial concerns about consumer access to advice. The report does not provide a pre-reform share figure, so the change in share cannot be measured from it.
Does trail commission legally require me to provide ongoing service?
This article does not state what your obligations are, and you should not take a market report as the source of them. The MFAA report describes trail as supporting ongoing customer engagement opportunities, which is a market observation rather than a statement of law. Best Interests Duty obligations under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009, addressed in ASIC’s Regulatory Guide 273, attach to credit assistance. What your specific obligations are after settlement, and how your records should evidence them, is a question for your licensee or aggregator compliance team.
Which share figure should I use for broker market share?
Use the one you can source. The report’s foreword says 81% of residential home lending, footnoted to an MFAA news item of 10 June 2026. The MFAA’s 21 October release and trade coverage cite 81.6% of new residential home lending in the June 2026 quarter from Cotality data commissioned by the MFAA. The report’s own disclaimer also warns that international share estimates “may not be directly comparable”, so treat cross-country comparisons as indicative.
Should I expand into insurance or broader advice because of this?
The report suggests the long-term value proposition “could be linked to broader advice”, based on what it observed overseas. Whether you can act on that depends on your authorisation, your aggregator’s arrangements and the licensing requirements for the specific products involved. Establish what you are permitted to do with your licensee first.
Sources
- MFAA, Global Insights Report 2026: Lessons and Emerging Trends for Australia’s Mortgage Broking Industry (primary source, read for this article)
- MFAA media release, “Global Insights Report explores the future of mortgage broking in Australia”, 21 October 2026
- The Adviser, Charlie Tchetchenian, “Australia’s broking trail commissions ‘unusual’ by global standards”, 22 October 2026
- Australian Broker, Kellie Ell, “Australia’s broking industry in the global spotlight”, 22 October 2026
- Broker Daily, Julian Barnes, “What the Australian broker industry can learn from overseas markets”, 22 October 2026
Breaking news for modern brokers
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Disclaimer: This article is for general information and professional development purposes only. It does not constitute legal, compliance, or financial advice. Brokers should consult their aggregator's compliance team and, where required, seek independent legal advice regarding their obligations under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 and ASIC’s responsible lending guidelines.
