The Pathway to Becoming a Commercial Broker

“Commercial broking isn’t a leap. It’s a pathway built through experience, relationships and the right opportunities.”

For many residential mortgage brokers, becoming a commercial broker feels like the natural next step in their career. 

You may already be helping self-employed clients, business owners and property investors with their home lending. Over time, those same clients may begin asking about commercial lending, including buying commercial premises, funding equipment, refinancing business debt, purchasing another business or exploring a development opportunity. 

That is often when a broker starts thinking seriously about building a career in commercial broking. 

The opportunity is significant, but becoming a successful commercial broker is not as simple as adding a few new lenders to your panel. It requires broader skills, commercial lending knowledge, stronger lender relationships and a deliberate approach to building experience and gaining accreditation. 

This was the focus of a Vision Aggregation Mentor Workshop, where brokers came together to explore the practical pathway from residential lending into commercial finance. Led by Jas Faszlic from Finsure Commercial, the workshop explored the stages of development, accreditation hurdles, lender relationships and the experience brokers need to build genuine commercial capability. 

The central message was clear: 

You don’t become a commercial broker overnight. You build your way there. 

Start With a Strong Residential Foundation 

For most brokers, the pathway into commercial starts with becoming confident and competent in residential lending.  Your core broking processes should be sound. You should be comfortable gathering information, understanding credit, presenting applications, managing lender relationships and guiding clients through a finance transaction. 

The most natural bridge into commercial is self-employed residential lending. 

Once you regularly work with self-employed borrowers, you are already developing some of the skills commercial lenders look for. You are dealing with financial statements, BAS, company and trust structures, business income and alternative methods of income verification. 

As discussed during the workshop, this experience can also give commercial lenders greater confidence that a broker understands more than PAYG income and a residential servicing calculator.  

There are exceptions. Someone entering broking with a strong background in business banking, commercial lending or a related professional field may be able to accelerate the journey. For most residential brokers, however, building the foundations first is the more sustainable approach.

Move Up the Complexity Ladder 

One of the strongest messages from the workshop was not to start too big. 

Commercial lending should be approached progressively. 

The pathway can begin with self-employed and extended residential lending before moving into relatively straightforward small-business and commercial property transactions. From there, brokers can progress into development and construction, more complex commercial investment structures and, eventually, specialised areas such as healthcare, agribusiness, childcare and larger corporate transactions.  

Confidence comes from repetition. 

Your first commercial property transaction may feel uncomfortable because the process, terminology and lender expectations are unfamiliar. After several similar transactions, you start recognising the patterns. You know which questions to ask, what information the lender is likely to require and where potential problems may arise. 

That is how commercial capability develops. 

Trying to leap immediately into a complex development, agribusiness or multi-entity transaction can have the opposite effect. Rather than accelerating your development, it can overwhelm you. 

Start where the complexity is manageable and progressively work your way up. 

Invest in Commercial Education Early 

Training should be part of the pathway from the beginning. Vision Aggregation, industry associations, lender portals and commercial BDMs all provide opportunities for brokers to increase their commercial knowledge. The workshop highlighted resources through the MFAA, FBAA and CAFBA, together with lender masterclasses and Vision’s own training resources.  

But attending training provides another benefit: it gets you in front of commercial lenders. 

Attend a lender masterclass. Ask questions. Introduce yourself to the commercial team. Follow up afterwards.  Over time, you become known to the people who may later help you workshop a transaction or support an accreditation application. 

Commercial lending is highly relationship-driven, so your education and network should develop together. 

Get the Right Accreditations at the Right Time 

MOne of the surprises for brokers moving into commercial is discovering that residential accreditation does not necessarily provide access to the same lender’s commercial channel. 

Commercial accreditation is generally an application process because lenders want evidence that brokers have sufficient experience to handle the transactions they are introducing. 

The workshop indicated that some major commercial lenders may look for around two years of relevant commercial experience. They may also consider previous transactions, deal sizes, training history, your résumé and your existing relationship with the lender.  

This creates an obvious dilemma: you need experience to get accreditation, but you need accreditation to gain experience. 

The solution is to start with commercial lenders that provide a more accessible entry point and use those relationships to build your experience. 

Your objective shouldn’t be to collect every commercial accreditation immediately. It should be to gain enough lender access to start writing appropriate commercial transactions. 

Your first accreditations aren’t the destination. They’re another step along the pathway. 

Write Deals – That Is Where the Real Learning Happens 

Training provides knowledge. Transactions provide experience. 

Once you start working on actual commercial deals, you begin to understand how commercial lending really works. 

You learn which questions need to be asked earlier. You learn how lenders think about a business, its management, cash flow and security. You discover how accountants, valuers, lawyers, bankers and credit teams can all influence a transaction. 

You also develop judgement. 

Sometimes the client is ready now. Sometimes they need another six months. Sometimes the proposed structure needs to change. Sometimes a different lender is required. 

And sometimes the correct decision is not to proceed. 

Those judgements cannot be learned entirely through training. As Jas emphasised during the workshop, nothing replaces presenting actual transactions and working through them with BDMs, bankers and credit teams.  

Early in your journey, don’t focus on writing the biggest commercial transaction possible. 

Focus on accumulating good commercial experience. 

Build Your Commercial Broker CV 

This was one of the most practical recommendations from the Mentor Workshop. 

From the beginning, maintain a separate record of your commercial development. 

Record the training you complete, accreditations you obtain and commercial transactions you work on. Include the lender, approximate deal size, type of transaction and level of complexity. 

Think of it as your Commercial Broker CV. 

When the time comes to approach lenders with more demanding accreditation requirements, you now have evidence of the pathway you have travelled. 

There is a big difference between a résumé that simply says “Mortgage Broker – four years” and one that demonstrates experience with self-employed borrowers, commercial property, SMSF lending, asset finance, cash-flow lending and completed commercial transactions.  

Don’t try to reconstruct that experience two years later. Record it as you go.

Use the Lender Relationships You Already Have 

You may already have one of the best routes into commercial lending sitting in your phone. 

Your residential BDMs. 

If you have a strong relationship with a lender, ask your residential BDM to introduce you to their commercial counterpart or business banker. 

An introduction from someone within the lender who already knows and trusts you can be considerably more powerful than an unsolicited request for accreditation. 

The workshop also encouraged brokers to attend commercial lender sessions and follow up with BDMs afterwards. 

Commercial lenders want to know who they are dealing with. The more they see that you are serious about developing your capability, the stronger those relationships can become. 

Expand Your Skills and Your Lender Panel Together 

As your commercial experience increases, your technical capability should grow with it. 

You will gradually become more confident interpreting financial statements, understanding cash flow, structuring transactions, identifying risks and presenting a commercial credit story. 

Your lender access can then expand alongside those skills. 

You might start with second-tier or specialist commercial lenders before progressively seeking access to more sophisticated commercial lenders and the majors. 

For many brokers, the workshop suggested thinking about this as roughly a 24-month development journey, depending on their previous experience, transaction history and individual lender requirements.  

Importantly, the objective isn’t to build the biggest lender panel. 

It’s to develop a panel you understand, use and have genuine relationships with. 

From Residential Broker to Commercial Adviser 

Ultimately, the biggest change isn’t accreditation.  It’s mindset.  Residential broking is often highly process-driven. Commercial broking increasingly requires judgement. 

Does the transaction make sense? Is the client ready? How should it be structured? Which lender has the appetite? What are the risks? Should the deal proceed? 

When you can confidently work through those questions, you are moving beyond simply arranging finance. 

You are becoming a commercial adviser. 

That doesn’t happen when an accreditation email lands in your inbox. It happens gradually through training, transactions, lender relationships, credit feedback and experience. 

The Pathway – In One Snapshot 

1. Build your residential foundations first.  

2. Use self-employed lending as your bridge into commercial.  

3. Start commercial training early.  

4. Build commercial BDM relationships before you need them.  

5. Gain accessible commercial accreditations and start small.  

6. Write real deals and learn from BDMs, bankers and credit.  

7. Keep a Commercial Broker CV documenting your journey.  

8. Increase transaction complexity progressively.  

9. Use existing lender relationships to open commercial doors.  

10. Expand your lender panel as your experience grows.  

11. Think 12 -24+ months, rather than overnight.  

12. Aim beyond accreditation – become a trusted commercial adviser.  

Or download The Pathway to Becoming a Commercial Broker Ready Reckoner here.

Ready to Start Your Commercial Journey? 

If commercial lending is part of where you want to take your business, talk to the Vision Aggregation team. 

We can help you understand where you currently sit on the pathway, identify training opportunities, connect with commercial lending specialists and consider the experience and accreditations you should build next. 

You don’t need to know everything before you start. You need to know where to start and what your next step should be. 

Give the Vision team a call on 1800 004 663 and let’s start building your pathway into commercial lending. 

Disclaimer 

This article provides general information for broker education and professional development only and does not constitute legal, financial, taxation, credit or compliance advice. Commercial lending policies, accreditation requirements, lender appetite and products vary and may change. Brokers should confirm current requirements, operate within their competence and applicable authorisations, and seek professional advice where appropriate. Vision Aggregation does not guarantee that training, experience or following the pathway outlined above will result in lender accreditation or loan approval.