Your brokerage almost certainly already has agreements with a panel of lenders. That doesn't automatically mean you, personally, can submit a file to all of them the day your licence arrives. Most lenders require each individual agent to be set up in their broker submission system — with your own agent or broker number — before you can transact under that lender's agreement with your brokerage. Getting added is usually an administrative step your brokerage's compliance or onboarding team handles, but it's worth confirming early rather than discovering the gap when a client is waiting mid-file.
In practice, a brand-new agent's early files frequently move through a lender relationship that isn't fully theirs yet — a mentor's standing contact with a business development manager, or simply the brokerage's aggregate volume and reputation opening a door an individual with zero history wouldn't open alone. That's normal, and it's a real advantage of a brokerage with strong existing lender relationships. It's also temporary by design: every file you submit under your own number starts building a track record that is genuinely yours.
Some lenders — often monoline and alternative lenders in particular — tie an agent's pricing tier, turnaround priority, or even continued active status to a minimum level of funded volume over a period. This is real and worth knowing exists. It's also lender-specific, internal, and subject to change without notice, which is exactly why this course won't hand you a number and call it fact: a threshold repeated as a rumour in a brokerage hallway is not the same as a lender's current published policy, and the two can be quietly different.
The right move when you hear a specific figure — 'Lender X wants ten deals a year' — is to confirm it directly with that lender's BDM or with your principal broker, not to plan your business around an unverified number. Policies genuinely do change, and a lender relationship built on a wrong assumption can cost more than one built on an honest question.
An inactive agent number with a lender can lose service priority or lapse over time, particularly with lenders that actively manage their broker panels. This is one reason spreading a small, steady trickle of business across a handful of lenders is often more useful early on than concentrating everything with one lender you may not use again for a year. It keeps more than one relationship genuinely alive while your volume is still building.
The first 90 days is the right window to start meeting BDMs directly rather than only working through a mentor's contact, learning each lender's actual submission requirements rather than assuming they're identical, and noticing — honestly — which lenders on your panel respond quickly and which are listed but slow. That map, built early, is worth more over the following year than memorizing every rate sheet on day one.
A new agent hears secondhand that a particular lender 'requires 10 funded deals a year to stay active.' What's the right response?
A specific-sounding number repeated secondhand isn't the same as a lender's current, confirmed policy — and this course's rule throughout is not to treat an unverified figure as fact. The tempting answer treats a hallway rumour as settled information because it sounds precise, but precision isn't the same as accuracy, and lender volume policies are exactly the kind of thing that changes without an announcement.
The intro and first module are free to read. Add your name and email once and the rest of this course opens — along with every other course on the site. No card, no trial.
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