Plain-English definitions of the terms used in Australian mortgage broking and broker workflow automation — written for brokers, compliance officers, and anyone learning the industry.
An Australian mortgage aggregator is a company that holds the lender accreditations on behalf of mortgage brokers, provides loan-management software, and processes commission payments. Examples include Connective, AFG, Loan Market, Choice, and Finsure. Most Australian mortgage brokers operate under an aggregator rather than holding lender accreditations directly.
An AVM is a property valuation produced by an algorithm using market data, sale comparables, and property attributes, without a physical inspection. AVMs are the cheapest and fastest valuation type used in Australian mortgage lending, typically free or low-cost, and accepted by most lenders for low-LVR loans on standard properties.
Best Interests Duty is a legal obligation under Australia's National Consumer Credit Protection Act, in force since 1 January 2021, that requires mortgage brokers to act in the best interests of consumers when providing credit assistance. Brokers must demonstrate, through documented reasoning, why a recommended loan is in the consumer's best interests rather than only the broker's.
An Australian regulatory rate, mandated under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act, that combines a loan's interest rate with most fees and charges into a single annual percentage to help borrowers compare loans on a like-for-like basis. The standard reference case is a loan of A$150,000 over 25 years secured by residential property. Comparison rates do not include all fees and should not be the only metric used to evaluate loans.
A property valuation conducted by a licensed valuer using available data and photographs without a physical inspection of the property. Desktop valuations sit between AVMs (algorithmic) and full valuations (physical inspection) in cost and reliability, and are commonly used by Australian lenders for refinance and lower-risk lending scenarios.
The fact-find is the initial information-gathering meeting between an Australian mortgage broker and a client. The broker collects detailed information about the client's income, expenses, assets, liabilities, employment, dependants, and loan objectives. The fact-find informs both serviceability assessment and Best Interests Duty documentation.
A property valuation conducted by a licensed valuer with a physical inspection of the property. Full valuations are the most accurate and most expensive type and are required by Australian lenders for high-LVR loans, complex properties, and certain commercial scenarios.
ISO/IEC 27001 is an international standard for information security management systems published by the International Organization for Standardization. Certification requires an independent audit demonstrating that an organisation has implemented controls covering risk assessment, access control, cryptography, supplier management, incident response, and continual improvement. SecondBrain is ISO 27001 certified.
A mortgage broker's lender panel is the set of lenders that the broker is accredited to write loans with. The panel is typically inherited from the broker's aggregator and may include major banks (CBA, Westpac, ANZ, NAB), regional banks (Bankwest, ING, Suncorp, ME Bank), and non-bank lenders. The breadth of the panel directly affects how much loan choice a broker can offer.
Lenders Mortgage Insurance is insurance paid by the borrower (typically capitalised into the loan) that protects the lender against borrower default. In Australia, LMI is generally required for loans where the LVR exceeds 80%, and is a significant cost factor in high-LVR home purchases.
Lodgement is the point in the Australian mortgage application process when a broker formally submits a complete loan application file to a lender for credit assessment. Lodgement comes after fact-find, serviceability assessment, document collection, and Best Interests Duty documentation, and triggers the lender's underwriting process.
Loan-to-Value Ratio is the loan amount expressed as a percentage of the security property's value. LVR is a primary risk metric in Australian mortgage lending: an LVR above 80% typically requires LMI, and most lenders set maximum LVRs (often 80–95% for owner-occupied loans) above which they will not lend.
The National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 is the primary Australian federal law regulating consumer credit, including mortgage lending and broking. The NCCP imposes responsible lending obligations, disclosure requirements, and licensing requirements (Australian Credit Licence) on lenders and brokers, and is administered by ASIC.
The Privacy Act 1988 is the primary Australian federal law governing the handling of personal information by Australian government agencies and most private-sector organisations. For mortgage brokers, the Act imposes obligations on how client data is collected, stored, used, and disclosed — including notification obligations in the event of a notifiable data breach.
Serviceability is the assessment of whether a borrower can afford to repay a proposed loan after meeting all other living and financial commitments. Each Australian lender runs its own serviceability calculation using its own assumptions about income, expenses, buffer interest rates, and existing debt treatment, which is why a borrower's maximum borrowing capacity can vary substantially between lenders.
Settlement is the final stage of an Australian property transaction, when funds are exchanged, title is transferred, and the loan becomes active. Settlement happens after the lender has formally approved the loan, the borrower has signed loan documents, and any conditions precedent have been met.
SOC 2 (Service Organization Control 2) is an audit framework developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) that evaluates a service provider's controls relevant to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. SOC 2 reports are commonly required by enterprise customers when assessing SaaS vendors.
In Microsoft 365 and Azure, a tenant is a dedicated, isolated instance of Microsoft's cloud services that an organisation owns and controls. Each tenant has its own users, data, security boundary, and Azure subscription. Tenant-resident SaaS — where an application runs inside the customer's own tenant rather than the vendor's — is a security model used by SecondBrain so that client data never leaves the customer's environment.