Mortgage Services Act compliance
Independent oversight and regulatory services for industries with strict financial and reporting requirements.
Compliant today. Ready for whatever comes next.
What’s included
- Trust Account Compliance
- Fractional Compliance Officer Services
- FINTRAC Independent Audits
- File Review Services for Real Estate, Mortgage Brokerages, and Strata Corporations
- Compliance Readiness Consulting
- Process & Procedure Compliance Reviews
Get ahead of the Mortgage Services Act
British Columbia's Mortgage Services Act comes into force on October 13, 2026, repealing the Mortgage Brokers Act and replacing registration with a full licensing framework under BCFSA. Every mortgage brokerage will need a designated principal broker, and the Superintendent gains significantly wider investigation and penalty powers.
The reporting regime is where most brokerages will feel it. Which set of requirements a filing falls under depends on your fiscal year-end: year-ends on or before October 12, 2026 stay under the Mortgage Brokers Act rules, and year-ends from October 13 fall under the new Act. If your year-end sits near that line, it is worth confirming which applies before you close the books.
Separately, and on the licensing side rather than the accounting one, BCFSA requires current registrants to complete transition education by September 22, 2026, with registration for it closing on September 8. That is BCFSA's requirement to administer, not ours, but it is worth confirming your brokers have it booked.
Regulatory change is easiest to absorb before it's enforced. Brokerages that wait until an examiner is asking questions end up rebuilding records under a deadline. That costs more, and it surfaces problems in front of the regulator instead of in front of you.
We review how your brokerage operates today, identify where the gaps sit, and give you a written plan with the order to fix them in. If your current processes already hold up, we'll tell you that too. A clean review is a useful thing to have on file.
What a trust account compliance review involves
Trust funds are where regulatory attention concentrates, because the money isn't yours. A review looks at whether client funds are properly segregated, whether reconciliations are performed and documented on schedule, whether disbursements are supported, and whether the people handling the account have the authority to do so.
We prepare the reporting your regulator requires and, more usefully, tell you what we found along the way. Most brokerages have one or two habits that are technically deficiencies and easily corrected. Better to hear it from us first.
FINTRAC independent reviews
Reporting entities under Canada's anti-money-laundering regime must have the effectiveness of their compliance programme reviewed independently, and must be able to show the results and what they did about them. Real estate and mortgage brokerages are squarely within scope. A programme that exists only as a binder nobody opens won't survive an examination.
We perform that review as an outside party: policies and procedures, risk assessment, training records, and whether reporting obligations are being met in practice as well as on paper. You get findings, a remediation list, and documentation you can hand to an examiner.
When a fractional compliance officer makes sense
Most brokerages are too small to justify a full-time compliance officer and too regulated to leave the role unfilled. So it lands on a managing broker who's already doing two jobs, and it gets attention only when something goes wrong.
A fractional arrangement gives you a named, qualified person carrying that responsibility year-round: monitoring, file reviews, training, and someone to call before you make a decision instead of after.
Common questions
- How often does FINTRAC require an independent review?
- The effectiveness of a compliance programme must be reviewed at least every two years, and the review has to be carried out by someone independent of the programme's day-to-day operation. You're also expected to document the findings and the corrective action taken. An examiner will ask for both.
- Can the same firm do our accounting and our compliance work?
- For most of this work, yes, and it's usually an advantage: the compliance review goes faster when the reviewer already understands how your books are structured. Where a specific engagement requires independence from the function being reviewed, we'll tell you before we accept it.
- What does a fractional compliance officer actually do?
- They carry ongoing responsibility for your compliance programme without being a full-time hire: monitoring and file reviews, keeping policies and risk assessments current, delivering staff training, preparing regulatory reporting, and being available to consult on decisions as they come up instead of at year end.
- What changes for my brokerage under the Mortgage Services Act?
- The Mortgage Services Act replaces the Mortgage Brokers Act on October 13, 2026. Registration becomes licensing, with separate licence categories for brokerages, principal brokers, mortgage brokers and lenders. Every brokerage must designate a principal broker accountable for conduct and supervision, current registrants have transition education to complete, and BCFSA gains far broader enforcement powers, including administrative penalties well into six figures.
- When is the actual deadline to transition?
- Two dates matter and they are different things. The Mortgage Services Act comes into force on October 13, 2026, which is when the new licensing and reporting framework applies. Before that, BCFSA requires current registrants to complete transition education by September 22, 2026, with registration for it closing on September 8, and anyone who misses it will not be licensed under the new Act. The education is BCFSA's requirement rather than something we administer, so check their current advisory for the details. What we help with is the accounting side: which filing regime your year-end falls under, and whether your records will support it.
- Does the new Act change our financial reporting or year-end?
- Yes, and the timing catches people out. The Mortgage Services Act reporting regime can require an Accountant's Report, a Trust Account Declaration, financial statements, a Brokerage Financial Information Filing and a Periodic Activity Report. Which regime your filing falls under depends on your fiscal year-end: year-ends on or before October 12, 2026 stay under the old Mortgage Brokers Act rules, while year-ends on or after October 13 fall under the new Act. If your year-end sits near that line, it is worth confirming which set of requirements applies before you close the books.
- We have never been examined. Do we still need this?
- Yes. The obligations apply whether or not you've been examined, and a first examination is a poor time to discover that reconciliations weren't documented or training records were never kept. The work is a lot cheaper done in advance.
In force: October 13, 2026
The Mortgage Services Act replaces the Mortgage Brokers Act on October 13, and with it the reporting a brokerage owes BCFSA. Which regime a filing falls under depends on your fiscal year-end. EverPeak can tell you which side of the line you sit on and where your brokerage stands today.
Separately, BCFSA requires current registrants to complete transition education by September 22, 2026, with registration closing September 8. That is a licensing requirement rather than an accounting one — see the BCFSA advisory.
Not sure if compliance is what you need?
Tell us your situation and we’ll point you to the right service — or tell you honestly if it isn’t us.
