The Mortgage Renewal Playbook: A 12-Month Timeline for Canadian Brokers

Why the renewal is the highest-ROI file in your book

Compare the economics. A new purchase file means lead cost, realtor relationships, condition deadlines, and a client you're still building trust with. A renewal means none of that: the relationship exists, the property is known, and the conversation starts from “what should the next term look like” rather than “who are you.” The only real competitor is inertia — the lender's letter sitting on the kitchen table with a signature line on it.

Every maturity you don't touch is a file you originated being handed back to the lender at whatever rate the retention desk chose. The playbook below exists to make sure that never happens by accident.

The lender's timeline — and why yours starts earlier

The incumbent's sequence is predictable: a retention-priced offer several months out, follow-up calls from the branch or retention desk, and a formal renewal disclosure that can legally arrive just weeks before maturity. If your first touch lands at the four-month mark, you're arriving at the same time as the lender's letter — and you've given up the months where switching plans, document collection, and rate strategy are easiest to set up. A renewal timeline that starts twelve months out turns the final four months into execution instead of persuasion.

The 12-month contact timeline

One row per touchpoint, from a year out to the week after funding. Adjust cadence per segment (below), but don't skip rows — each one exists because of something the incumbent does at that point.

Keep every touchpoint CASL-clean

Most of this timeline travels by email, which makes it commercial electronic messaging. Under CASL, implied consent from an existing business relationship generally lasts two years from the transaction — which means a five-year term can outlive your implied consent mid-book. The fix is to capture express consent at funding, while goodwill is at its peak, and to build every message to CEM standard anyway: clear identification of your brokerage and a working unsubscribe. A purely factual service message about the client's existing mortgage is treated differently from a promotional one, but the line is thin — when in doubt, meet the higher standard. Our CASL guide for mortgage brokers covers consent categories and record-keeping in detail; verify current CRTC guidance before building automated sequences.

When to run the penalty math

The trigger is any conversation about moving before maturity. For fixed-rate mortgages the prepayment charge is typically the greater of three months' interest and the IRD; for variable, typically three months' interest. Which method the lender uses to compute IRD matters enormously — the posted-rate convention most big banks apply can produce a penalty roughly double what a market-rate monoline would charge on the same balance. The full mechanics are in our guide to posted-rate vs. market-rate IRD penalties, and you can model scenarios in the prepayment penalty calculator.

• IRD shrinks as maturity approaches. It scales with remaining term, so waiting 60–90 days sometimes flips the recommendation from “stay” to “switch.” Re-run the math each month inside the final stretch.
• Ask about early-renewal windows. Many lenders let clients renew early within the final months of the term without penalty — the window and conditions are lender policy, so confirm before promising.
• Know the requalification rules for switches. OSFI's current guidance no longer requires requalifying at the minimum qualifying rate for straight switches of uninsured mortgages at renewal — same loan amount, same amortization — but verify current guidance before relying on it. Anything that increases the loan or resets the amortization is a refinance and gets full qualification, including GDS/TDS at the stress-tested rate.

Segment the book so the timeline scales

Running nine touchpoints on every file is not realistic past a few dozen renewals a year. Segment on three axes and weight the effort:

• Time to maturity. Everything maturing inside twelve months runs the full timeline. Everything else gets the annual review and stays warm.
• Rate delta. Payment-shock files — clients renewing well above their origination rate — need the earliest contact and a payment plan, not just a rate quote: model amortization and payment options with the mortgage payment calculator before the strategy call. Rate-flat files are the opposite risk: the incumbent's letter looks “fine,” so the client signs it without calling you.
• Lender and product. Variable-rate clients can usually act any time at three months' interest. Big-bank fixed clients are typically cheapest to move at maturity because of posted-rate IRD. Monoline clients often have more mid-term flexibility. The segment determines whether the conversation is “now” or “at renewal.”

Track it or lose it

A timeline only protects your book if it fires on time, for every file, without you remembering it. Spreadsheets hold up while the book is small; past a few dozen active maturities, renewals start slipping through in exactly the months the incumbent is calling. Inside BrokerOS, every funded file carries its maturity date, the pipeline surfaces files as they enter the twelve-month window, and each touchpoint is logged against the client record — the same place your applications and documents already live. Create a free account and put your maturity dates somewhere that won't forget them.

More broker guides

• How IRD penalties really work: posted-rate vs. market-rate methods
• CASL for mortgage brokers: consent, CEMs, and record-keeping
• Running Finmo deals through one pipeline