Aman Harish.

I didn’t grow up planning to be a mortgage broker. I studied psychology, and after university I was working at Rogers when a professional setback forced a reset. The obvious next step was a Masters, but more school didn’t feel right. I was in that “what now” stage most people don’t like to admit to.

That’s when Satyen Drepaul stepped in. He’d already spent decades building Canadian Mortgage Services, and his advice was practical: get your mortgage licence while you figure things out. It’s quick to obtain, and you can start part time. I got licensed in 2012 and never looked back. What started as a placeholder became the work I was built for, because this job is mostly about understanding people under pressure, and that’s what I’d been studying all along.

We help every kind of borrower at CMS, whether the right fit is a major bank, an alternative lender or a private solution. But the files I specialize in are the ones where the application doesn’t tell the whole story.

Here’s the honest truth about prime lending: once you clear the bar, you clear it. Two approved clients with the same numbers get the same rate whether one has a 700 credit score and the other has 800. Straightforward files mostly need a clean process and the sharpest rate.

The clients who truly need a broker are the ones a computer would decline. Self-employed income that reads lower on paper than it is in real life. Credit that took a hit for reasons that made sense at the time. Ratios that miss by a little. Those files need someone to understand what’s actually going on, then build the case and advocate for it with the right lender. Those clients aren’t fixated on rate. They want the approval, and they want to know they can carry the payments. That’s the work I love.

A few examples of what that looks like in practice:

• Years ago I started structuring private mortgages so a portion of the funds was set aside to cover the payments during the term. Private money is a temporary tool, so if the exit is a sale or a refinance, the client never carries the full scheduled payment out of pocket while they get there. I won’t claim I invented the idea, but at the time no lender we dealt with was offering it, and today versions of it are common across the industry.
• When debt servicing blocks an approval, I’ll often restructure the down payment itself. Putting down 10% instead of 20% and using the difference to clear the right debts can bring the ratios in line and turn a declined file into an approved one.
• When the loan-to-value doesn’t work on a property, sometimes the answer is family. If a relative has equity in their own home and wants to help, a lender can register one mortgage across both properties, and that blanket structure has saved more than one purchase.
• Some clients simply aren’t ready yet. For them I map out exactly what the next six to twelve months need to look like, from cleaning up credit to how their bank account should read. The ones who follow the framework come back and become homeowners. That part never gets old.

We don’t hand out mortgages just because someone insists on one. The solution has to be right and the math has to make sense, not only on approval day but every month of the term. I’m upfront about what a mortgage will mean for a client’s day-to-day life, and I’ve talked more than a few people out of a decision they were emotionally committed to.

The clearest example is renewals. Clients often want to switch lenders for a slightly better rate. Much of the time I send them back to their own bank with a simple script: tell them a broker quoted you this. More often than not the lender matches it, and the client renews by signing a few pages. We only get paid when we place a mortgage, so we earn nothing from that advice. But a tenth of a percent in savings is usually a wash once you count legal fees, title insurance, an appraisal and the hours a switch takes. When switching genuinely wins, we’ll say so and do the work. When it doesn’t, we’ll tell you that too.

I started in 2012, when this business ran on fax machines, paper applications and in-person meetings. Today nearly everything happens through digital lender and client portals, and AI is making the work faster and sharper still. I’ve always been an early adopter, because every hour technology saves is an hour I can spend on the part that matters, which is thinking through a client’s file.

Most mornings start with a workout to keep my energy and focus sharp. The rest of my time belongs to my wife, our two young kids, and a border collie who keeps us all in line. And on Sundays in the fall, you’ll find me cheering on the Philadelphia Eagles.