The conversations that matter most
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What separates high-performing brokers from the rest? MCAP asked more than 100 of them to find out and turned the answers into a program that’s reinventing what this lender’s support looks like
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Not long ago, a mortgage broker’s most powerful sales tool was the rate sheet. Around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, rates dipped to new lows, hitting under 2 percent. Volume came easily during that time. As Cluny Coghlan, MCAP’s business development manager for the Greater Vancouver Area and Interior B.C., puts it, “those rates could sell themselves.”
That era is over. Since then, the industry has absorbed unprecedented rate swings. It’s dealt with housing affordability pressures. There’s been a consumer confidence crisis. And all this as it reckons with growing regulatory complexity.
In response, the broker role has expanded. Borrowers are showing a sharpened appetite for guidance that goes well beyond rate comparisons.
“Brokers are now seen as educators,” Coghlan says. “The expectation has increased significantly, which means the support that we provide as a lender needs to evolve as well.”
MCAP is Canada’s largest independent mortgage finance company with over $155 billion in assets under management providing mortgage solutions for residential and commercial properties. Founded in 1981, MCAP originates, trades, securitizes, and services mortgages in offices across Canada. MCAP originates residential mortgages exclusively through the mortgage broker channel as it believes that a professional mortgage broker is a homeowner’s best option, and MCAP actively promotes the services of mortgage brokers across the country.
MCAP is also a leader in the Canadian residential construction lending market with over 25 years in the business. Its teams of dedicated professionals serve a variety of developer, construction, and lender clients across Canada.
“Brokers are now seen as educators. The expectation has increased significantly, which means the support that we provide as a lender needs to evolve as well”
Cluny Coghlan,
MCAP
“We saw an opportunity to make it a bit more personal and practical. The research gave us the underlying foundation, but the brokerage’s goals determine what the conversation will become”
Colin Byrne,
MCAP
Published Oct 19, 2026
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“The most valuable thing we bring into the room isn’t answers; it’s the conversations that the brokers have while learning from these sessions and learning from each other”
Shawn Jewers,
MCAP
For Byrne, the approach mirrors the industry itself: as the market evolves, so too does the broker-led formula – and its use cases. Along with Jewers, the duo is developing a project aimed at onboarding brokers, particularly those transitioning from banking. They’re using the formula to reduce barriers to entry and improve early career success rates.
“There are so many different ways we can use the data and the conversations that brokers are willing to have with us that it almost seems endless,” Jewers says. “Every day there’s a new angle, a new opportunity, and it all comes from the brokers and what they’re looking for.”
Something here for everyone As licensed professionals, there’s always been a requirement for brokers to keep up with the market. Now, being as educated as possible has rocketed to the top of the priority list. The work MCAP is doing makes that feat a little easier, and to take advantage of it, all brokers need to do is ask.
“It doesn’t matter what market you’re in or what stage of business you’re at, there’s something here for you to learn that’s specific, tangible, and useful enough to put into action tomorrow,” Jewers says. “Maximize opportunities: speak up, talk to your MCAP BDM, and ask for what’s available.”
What started as an effort to understand what makes high-performing brokers tick has evolved well beyond what anyone expected. The MCAP BDMs are surprised by how much they learned themselves, including about what it means to be a broker-centric lender.
“We’re here to support the development and growth of those brokers because their success in the industry reflects back on our success; they’re our livelihood,” Coghlan says. “The goal isn’t simply to help brokers close more transactions. It’s to help them build stronger businesses and long-term careers in the industry – and let them know they have a lender partner who’s there for them.”
$6M – $7M
Average annual volume
(canada)
Know your numbers
The average broker in Canada does between $6 and $7 million in volume every year. The Broker Success Formula gives brokers a benchmark and a roadmap to move beyond it.
Rather than assume, they asked The recognition that brokers needed more than rate support – “They simply can’t just repeat what was working for them five years ago and expect the same result,” says Colin Byrne, business development manager for the GTA – led MCAP to ask a different kind of question or, more accurately, a long list of them.
MCAP wanted to understand what drove high-performing businesses, going directly to the broker community. Through conversations with more than 100 brokers across Canada, the goal was to capture the habits and systems that produced consistent positive results. Brokers were asked to show, not tell, what they were doing differently.
“We entered into this initiative thinking we were going to uncover one specific broker success model,” says Byrne. “What we learned is there isn’t one.”
Successful brokers have different personalities, operate in different markets, prefer different business models, and have their own individual ambitions. But what was consistent, Byrne notes, was the underlying principles.
“A disciplined mindset, strong relationships, repeatable systems, and a genuine commitment to the client experience,” he sums up.
Those common themes were organized into four pillars: foundation (what everything rests on), execution (the structure of the business), engagement (how brokers connect with the outside world), and optimization (what allows the whole thing to grow and hold together over time). The Broker Success Formula, as it became known, gives brokers a framework they can apply in whatever way suits their own goals and markets.
As MCAP BDMs took the show on the road – literally, presenting the findings across the country in a series of TED Talk-style appearances – it became clear that the findings also lent themselves to a more tailored delivery. The program was retooled into customized in-office workshops, where BDMs sit down with individual brokerages to understand their specific priorities. A team focused on referral growth, for example, gets a different conversation than one working through team development or operational efficiency.
“We saw an opportunity to make it a bit more personal and practical,” Byrne explains. “The research gave us the underlying foundation, but the brokerage’s goals determine what the conversation will become.”
Jewers agrees, noting that the customization has been a gamechanger. They’re able to dive into the research and pull out the information each brokerage is looking for – and often “provide solutions they didn’t know they needed.”
The workshops are doing something else, too, something MCAP didn’t fully anticipate: they’re cracking open communication in a profession not known for sharing.
“There’s a lot of collaboration that’s come out of this, in a very lone wolf industry,” Coghlan says.
‘I don’t think you guys realize how good this is’ A major differentiator in this work is that it’s far from a product pitch or a rate sheet dump. One of Jewers’ earliest workshop participants made a comment that captures the essence of MCAP’s mission. The broker said it was the first time a lender had shown up for his team without asking for anything in return. It wasn’t about MCAP at all; it was entirely about them.
Coghlan says the feedback she gets most often is a version of that same sentiment.
“I hear a lot, ‘you’re the only lender doing this – sitting down
with us, learning more about our business, and focusing on how we can grow and develop personally and professionally,’” she says.
Byrne says the main takeaway he hears is even more succinct: “I’m often told, ‘I don’t think you guys realize how good this is.’”
On the ground, the BDMs see the impact of the workshops beyond the session itself. Jewers recalls one he ran in northern Alberta, bringing together brokers from different brokerages who had never met. By the end of the session, the group had formed a connection that surpassed MCAP bringing them together, and they still meet to this day.
“They’re each other’s friends, they’re each other’s community,” Jewers says. “The most valuable thing we bring into the room isn’t answers; it’s the conversations that the brokers have while learning from these sessions and learning from each other.”
These sessions are a welcome moment of pause in a profession that often moves too fast for easy self-reflection. Byrne notes one of the most common challenges brokers face is being so consumed working in their business they have no time to work on it.
In this case, “MCAP has done all that work for you,” he says. “You attend a workshop, and we supply you with workbooks and other assets to make sure you’re on the right path. We create the guardrails and systems and brokers just apply them.”
The Broker Success Formula isn’t static, and that’s its superpower. MCAP gave the BDMs the freedom to adjust the workshops they host based on what they’re hearing.
Coghlan says she’s continually impressed by the unique questions she fields and uses them to tweak future iterations. She’s already moving to bring about post-workshop broker accountability groups, to keep participants on track.
“The design is by brokers, for brokers,” says Shawn Jewers, MCAP’s business development manager for Edmonton. “I’ve spent years helping brokers work in their business, but the Broker Success Formula actually gave us an opportunity to work on and in their business simultaneously.”
The data also provides concrete benchmarks that many didn’t have access to previously. For example, the average broker in Canada does between $6 and $7 million in volume every year. Brokers can see how they measure up: are they average? Below? Top 20 percent?