What each lender type actually wants on paper.

OSFI's Guideline B-20 sets the tone for A-lender documentation: income verification is expected to be rigorous, because it's a key factor in assessing capacity to repay and in detecting misrepresentation. In practice that means recent pay stubs, a Notice of Assessment, an employer letter confirming position and income, and for self-employed borrowers, two years of Notices of Assessment plus business financials or a Statement of Business Activities.

Down payment sources need a documented paper trail — 90-day account history for saved funds, or a gift letter plus donor identification for gifted funds. See self-employed mortgage underwriting for how A lenders read business income specifically.

Credit documentation at an A lender is largely pulled directly through the bureau rather than supplied by the borrower, but any explanation for a past issue — a missed payment tied to a specific, resolved circumstance, for example — is worth attaching proactively rather than waiting for the underwriter to flag it as a condition.

Property documentation rounds out the A-lender package: purchase agreement, MLS listing where applicable, and confirmation of property taxes and, for a condo, the condo corporation's status certificate where the lender requires it. None of this is optional at an A lender — it's simply the baseline the file has to clear before the income and credit review even matters.

B lenders generally accept a wider range of income evidence — business bank statements, a shorter self-employment history, or stated income with supporting context — because they're pricing for the added risk rather than requiring the file to fit an A-lender box. What they add instead is scrutiny on the story: why the income looks the way it does, and what the exit strategy is.

Property documentation at a B lender is often closer to A-lender standard than the income side is — an appraisal is still commonly required, and the equity position still matters a great deal to the decision, even where the income package itself is lighter than an A lender would accept.

The shift isn't arbitrary — it tracks directly back to how each lender type is qualifying the risk in the first place. See how B lenders assess files for why the narrative carries as much weight as the numbers once a file moves outside standard A-lender policy.

Credit union documentation generally sits closer to A-lender standard on paper, but with more room for a well-explained context note to influence how a borderline number is read — see how credit unions assess mortgage files for the regulatory reasoning behind that flexibility.

Private lending in Canada — including individual lenders and Mortgage Investment Corporations (MICs) — is disclosed through a prescribed investor/lender disclosure statement in most provinces, which the broker completes and provides to the private lender. Beyond that disclosure, documentation typically leans toward the security: an appraisal or property assessment, title search, and a clear exit strategy, with income verification playing a smaller role than at an A or B lender.

A Mortgage Investment Corporation pools investor capital and lends against real property according to its own internal policy, so documentation expectations can still vary meaningfully between individual private lenders and MICs, and between one MIC and another — it's worth confirming what a specific private lender actually wants to see before assuming the lightest possible package will do.

Even where income documentation is lighter, private lenders still generally want a clear picture of the borrower's overall situation and a plausible repayment or refinance plan — the emphasis shifts toward the property, but a private lender extending funds still wants confidence the borrower isn't heading toward default with no way out.

Legal representation is also a documentation-adjacent piece worth flagging early on a private deal: independent legal advice for the borrower is commonly expected on a private mortgage, and building that into the timeline from the start avoids a late scramble to arrange it right before closing.

Collect the fuller A-lender-style package by default — it can always be trimmed for a B or private submission, but a thin private-lending-style file sent to an A lender almost always comes back with conditions. Building a lender-type-aware checklist into the intake process avoids the back-and-forth.

This matters most on files where the lender isn't decided until after the initial client conversation — if the fuller package is collected up front, moving the file from a declined A-lender attempt to a B-lender or private submission doesn't cost a second round of client document requests, which is often where a deal loses days it didn't need to lose.

Treadstone's fulfillment associates maintain document checklists by lender category, so the intake conversation gathers the right evidence once instead of chasing a client for a second round of paperwork.

• →Sending a mismatched document set — a stated-income-style package to an A lender, or a full A-lender package to a private lender who only needed the appraisal and title
• →Down payment funds that don't have a clean 90-day paper trail, regardless of lender type
• →A self-employment story with no explanatory note, leaving the underwriter to guess at context that could have been provided up front
• →Waiting for the underwriter to ask for a document that any lender in that category was always going to need

Most of these are avoidable with a lender-type-aware checklist built into intake, rather than a single generic document list applied to every file regardless of where it's headed.