The country’s newest mortgage broker association has spent its first few weeks beefing up membership rolls, setting an ambitious target for its fast approaching first quarter.
The country’s newest mortgage broker association has spent its first few weeks beefing up membership rolls, setting an ambitious target for its fast approaching first quarter.
“We are sending out our first mass membership request email this week,” said MBAAC President Glen Ward, also regional VP for Mortgage Architects in Atlantic Canada. “We have been busy gathering emails and spreading the word. Our goal is to have 200 members by end of February.”
Meeting that objective would come little more than three months after Ward announced the development of the Mortgage Brokers Association of Atlantic Canada in mid-November.
The regional organization will draw membership from not only mortgage brokers but lenders, insurers and other industry professionals in Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI.
Development has been a year in the making, with an appointed board of directors now in place for the independent association. Those mortgage professionals met earlier this month, said Ward.
“We had our first official board meeting last week, and set out our strategy of how to drive membership, which we will be implementing over the next two months,” he told MortgageBrokerNews.ca.
The appointed board will be replaced with an elected one in 2013, said Ward, a financial services veteran and a licensed broker for the last five years.
Part of the group’s mandate is to grow the number of those regulated mortgage professionals across the Atlantic region.
Currently, only Ward’s province, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland license brokers. New Brunswick and PEI are being encouraged to move in the same direction, although many brokers in all four jurisdictions want to see the industry more tightly regulated.
“There is no educational component to licensing in any of the four provinces,” said Ward. “Our goal, as an association, is to provide a voice for the industry with government regulators. Our membership is growing.”
