Mortgage monitoring, explained.
Mortgage monitoring is watching every funded mortgage in your book after closing, so you know the moment a client should hear from you. This page covers what it is, what gets watched, how brokers have done it by hand, and where the work goes wrong.
What mortgage monitoring is
Mortgage monitoring is the work that happens after a deal funds. The file closes, the commission is paid, and the mortgage sits with a lender for the next few years. Monitoring means keeping a read on it that whole time: the rate the client is paying, what it would cost them to leave, when the term ends, and whether anything has moved enough to be worth a call.
It is not a newsletter and it is not a mailing list. It is a running read on each individual mortgage, using that client's real numbers, so that when you reach out you already know why you are reaching out.
Most brokers do some version of it already. A renewal list. A calendar reminder. A spreadsheet sorted by maturity date. Monitoring is the same instinct applied to every client, every day, instead of the ones you happen to think of.
Why it matters for your existing book
A funded mortgage is not finished business. Over a five year term a client's rate can go from competitive to expensive, their equity grows, their income changes, and the cost of breaking the mortgage moves every single month. Any one of those can be the reason for a conversation.
The other half of it is simpler. Somebody is going to have that conversation with your client. If it is not you, it is the lender at renewal, or another broker who timed an email well.
Jeff Mudrick built the first version of RateGuard Pro for his own book, in a Google Sheet, for exactly this reason. More than half of his book now comes from clients he had already funded.
What mortgage monitoring watches
- The rate gap against today's marketWhat the client pays now against what the same client could get today. A gap on its own is not news. It becomes news once it is wide enough to beat the cost of leaving.
- The penalty today, and where it is headingWhat it costs to break right now. For most fixed rate mortgages at a big bank the penalty is the greater of three months interest or the interest rate differential, so it moves as rates move and as the remaining term shortens. On a variable rate mortgage it is three months interest and there is no differential to work out.
- Maturity and the renewal windowThe last stretch of the term, when the lender's renewal offer lands and the client decides with or without you.
- Anniversaries and check-insThe one year mark, each year after it, and the ordinary reasons to be in touch that have nothing to do with rate.
- Bank of Canada announcementsThe days when every variable rate client in your book has the same question and expects somebody to answer it.
How brokers did it manually
The usual setup is a spreadsheet. One row per client. Columns for lender, balance, rate, term and maturity date, sorted on maturity so the next few months sit at the top. Then a calendar reminder a few months out and a note to check the rate before calling.
It works for a while. It stops working when the book gets big enough that the sheet is out of date the week after you build it. Balances fall with every payment. Rates move. A client refinances somewhere else and the row stays there anyway. The maturity sort still runs, but everything that is not a renewal, the rate gaps and the penalty windows, goes unseen, because nobody has the hours to price every mortgage in the book by hand.
That is the honest limit of the manual version. It catches the dates. It cannot catch the changes.
What RateGuard Pro does
RateGuardPro is mortgage monitoring software for Canadian mortgage brokers. Your book loads from your CRM or from a spreadsheet, so you are not retyping it. From then on every funded mortgage is checked daily against current rates and against its own current penalty.
What comes back is an order of work rather than a report. The clients worth a call are ranked, with the reason attached. The penalty is priced using that lender's own method, today and projected through the rest of the term, so you know whether the move is worth it before you dial. The first email is drafted from that client's actual numbers, in your name and your voice.
Nothing sends without you. You read the draft, change what you want, and send it. That part is deliberate. The numbers are the software's job. The relationship is yours.
Common questions
What is mortgage monitoring?
Watching every funded mortgage in your book after closing for the moments a client should hear from you: a rate gap worth acting on, a penalty window, a maturity date, an anniversary, a rate announcement. It reads each client's own numbers rather than treating the book as one mailing list.
How often should a broker review their book?
A once a year pass is common, and the renewal window most brokers work is the last 120 days of the term. Rates, balances and penalties move faster than that. Checking daily is what monitoring means, and it is the only way the smaller signals get caught while they still matter.
What is an IRD penalty?
IRD stands for interest rate differential. It is the difference between the interest the lender expected to earn over the rest of the term and what it can earn lending that money today. Lenders calculate it differently: some use the discount off posted rates at signing, some use posted rates with no discount, some use current street rates, some price off a bond yield. For most fixed rate mortgages the penalty is the greater of the differential or three months interest. On a term longer than five years, the penalty is capped at three months interest once five years have passed.
When should a client hear about a refinance?
When the numbers hold up. The interest saved over the remaining term has to cover the penalty and the cost of the switch with enough left to matter, and the break even has to sit comfortably inside the time the client plans to keep the mortgage. Break even is the number of months of savings it takes to pay the penalty back.
Is mortgage monitoring the same as a CRM?
No. A CRM stores what you know about a client and reminds you to follow up. Monitoring reads the mortgage itself and tells you when something about it changed. They work next to each other. RateGuardPro reads the book out of the CRM and hands back the calls worth making.
Keep reading
Monitoring is the idea. How to find the opportunities already in your book is the method: the columns to gather, the five signals to check for every client, and how to price a switch honestly before you pick up the phone.