Mortgage Broker vs. Bank: What's Actually Different

A bank's mortgage specialist can only offer that bank's own products and rates. A mortgage broker works with multiple lenders — banks, credit unions, alternative and private lenders — and shops your application across them, typically at no direct cost to you (brokers are usually paid a commission by the lender you end up with, not by you).

Brokers tend to have an advantage with non-standard situations — self-employed income, past credit issues, alternative lending needs — simply because they have more lenders and products to work with than a single bank's offering.

Banks can have an advantage if you already have a strong existing relationship (preferred rates or bundled product discounts for long-time customers) or want everything — chequing, savings, mortgage — under one roof for simplicity.

Nothing stops you from doing both: get a quote from your own bank and from a broker, and compare the actual numbers rather than assuming one path is automatically cheaper. Rate alone also isn't the whole comparison — prepayment privileges and penalty terms vary meaningfully between offers that look similar on rate alone.