State of Broking 2026, Part 2 of 4: Median Upfront Revenue Rose 16.0% and Trail 18.7%. The Clawback Line Rose 16.5% Too

For the first time, the MFAA’s annual industry benchmark includes revenue indicators. They show central values moving up across the participating aggregators in 2025, with trail outpacing upfront. They also show the median clawback amount rising almost in step. How you read them depends on reading the fine print first.

What was measured

The MFAA released the State of Mortgage & Finance Broking Report 2026, its first annual benchmark of the industry, on 25 September 2026. The Broker Times attended the launch briefing. The report covers the 2025 calendar year and draws principally on data from nine participating aggregators, analysed by Comparator, a Cotality business. The MFAA’s public summary of the report is here.

The revenue section uses three measures. Aggregate gross upfront commissions across a matched six-aggregator sample. Median reported gross upfront and trail revenue per broker across the same six aggregators. And a median reported gross clawback amount per broker across a smaller matched sample of five.

The medians are calculated across aggregator-level responses, with each aggregator response given equal weight. That design matters: it is a median of what aggregators reported, not the median broker in Australia.

The numbers

Those increases sit against a year in which residential settlement value rose 23.5% to $495.55 billion and the broker-originated residential loan book grew 11.0% to about $1.17 trillion. The report’s own summary is that the results “indicate stronger central revenue values across participating aggregators in 2025, accompanied by a higher median dollar amount of clawbacks.”

Why trail outpaced upfront

Trail rose faster than upfront at the median, 18.7% against 16.0%. The report does not explain the gap, and the measures come from matched samples rather than the whole market, so treat any explanation as a working theory.

One plausible contributor is simple compounding. Trail is paid on the balance of loans that stay on the book, and the report shows the broker-originated residential book growing to about $1.17 trillion. Larger average loan sizes and a year of strong settlements feed the trail base for years afterwards. Whatever the mix of causes, the practical point for a broker is that trail is becoming a larger part of the revenue picture, which makes retention work more valuable.

The clawback line

The median gross clawback amount per broker rose 16.5%, from about $9,820 to $11,442. The report asks readers not to read it in isolation, noting the increase “should also be considered alongside the increases in median upfront and trail revenue rather than in isolation.”

That is fair. A broker writing more loans will generally have more loans capable of being clawed back. But it is also a cash-flow point. Clawbacks arrive after the commission has been banked and often spent, and they tend to cluster when refinancing activity is high. The MFAA’s wider report covers a year in which applications rose 18.4% and settlements by volume rose 17.2%.

MFAA chief executive Anja Pannek linked the channel’s growth to the trust clients place in it:

“As our industry continues to grow, maintaining that trust is critical. Every client should receive high quality guidance and support focused on their individual needs and circumstances.”Anja Pannek, Chief Executive Officer, Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia, MFAA media release, 25 September 2026

What these figures are not

The report is unusually explicit about the limits, and it is worth repeating them because these numbers will be quoted widely.

• They are not broker-level medians. They are medians across aggregator responses.
• They are not net income. All are gross, before aggregator deductions, business expenses and tax.
• They are not whole-of-market benchmarks. They come from six, or five, participating aggregators.
• They should not be added together. The report says upfront, trail and clawback medians are separate indicators and should not be combined to derive a median total or net revenue.

So if a client, a recruit or a journalist tells you “the median broker earns $200,000” by adding the upfront and trail figures, they are misreading the report.

A revenue health check

Sources: Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia (MFAA), State of Mortgage & Finance Broking Report 2026, published 25 September 2026, for all report figures and for quotations from the CEO’s report; MFAA media release, “A home loan facilitated through a mortgage broker every 38 seconds”, 25 September 2026 (PDF); MFAA news, “New report captures the growing role of brokers across Australia”. Figures are credited to the MFAA State of Mortgage & Finance Broking Report 2026. Calculations marked as ours are The Broker Times’ arithmetic on the report’s published figures. The full report is available to MFAA members via the Member Portal.