Ontario mortgage agent licence renewal: the annual deadline, and the CE cycle underneath it.

Every year, by March 31, per FSRA's renewal requirements. Renewal applications open February 1, and the renewal fee is $841, submitted by your principal broker on your behalf.

This applies whether or not it's a CE year — the annual renewal itself never skips a year.

CE is only required every two years, tied to even years — 2026, 2028, 2030, and so on — and it's completed alongside the March 31 renewal in those years. It has two separate components:

Conduct CE is delivered through FSRA-accredited providers — for the 2024–2026 cycle, the Canadian Mortgage Brokers Association—Ontario, Mortgage Professionals Canada, and the Real Estate and Mortgage Institute of Canada — and the provider reports your completion directly to FSRA.

Professional CE is self-directed: you choose courses, seminars, webinars, or industry conferences that cover the technical side of mortgage brokering — legal and regulatory matters, mortgage fraud, client needs analysis, risk management, and similar topics qualify. Sales technique, recruiting, and general office-skills training don't. You're responsible for keeping records — course name, provider, hours, and completion date — for four years, and for reporting that detail when you renew.

Per FSRA's CE guidance, several situations disqualify hours you might assume are covered. None of the following can be claimed toward Professional CE:

• →A course where you can't supply the required details — course name, provider, hours, and completion date.
• →A course you registered for but didn't actually attend.
• →Hours spent as an instructor or teaching a course, rather than taking one.
• →Repeating a course you've already taken, unless it demonstrates genuinely new content.
• →A course you failed.

FSRA can also request evidence — certificates or attendance records — and may contact the course provider directly to verify what you submit. Padding your hours with a course you slept through or a repeat you didn't actually need is a real way to fail an audit, not just a technicality.

Your licence expires, and you're not permitted to deal in mortgages until it's reinstated. If it expired less than two years ago, you can apply for reinstatement; if it's been expired longer, you have to apply for a new licence from scratch — effectively repeating the original licensing path. For how this fits alongside other provinces' renewal rules, see mortgage licence requirements by province.

A different scenario that looks like a lapse but isn't: if your brokerage's own licence gets suspended, your agent licence doesn't automatically expire — per FSRA, you can transfer to another licensed brokerage, and the suspension clears once your new brokerage authorizes you. The new brokerage has to submit that transfer application before your next renewal is due.

Per FSRA's reinstatement page, a reinstated licence comes back into force with an expiry date of the following March 31 — you then still need to file an ordinary renewal application to carry it past that date. One practical relief: if your renewal application was submitted by March 31 but FSRA hasn't finished processing it yet, you can keep conducting business while it's pending — the gap only becomes a real problem if you never filed anything at all.

Track both clocks separately — put March 31 on the calendar every year, and flag the even-year CE requirement specifically, since it's easy to assume CE is annual when it isn't. One thing you don't need to track: personal errors & omissions insurance. Mortgage agents in Ontario don't carry their own E&O policy — the brokerage's policy covers its licensed agents.

Once compliance is handled, most agents redirect that attention toward volume. That's where Treadstone's fulfillment and marketing support for Canadian mortgage professionals earns its keep — keeping the pipeline moving while renewal and CE stay on autopilot.