Last reviewed: 16 September 2026
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Mortgage broker advertising rules across Canadian provinces, explained
Our Regulation N explainer covers the single federal rule against deceptive mortgage advertising in the US, enforced jointly by the FTC and CFPB. Canada has no directly equivalent federal advertising rule for mortgage brokering — instead, each province's own mortgage broker law sets its own advertising requirements, the same "check the specific province" pattern this Library's other Canada pages already describe for licensing and disclosure.
Ontario: your name and license number have to be on the ad itself
Under Ontario Regulation 187/08 (Mortgage Brokerages: Standards of Practice) and its companion regulation for administrators, FSRA requires that any public relations material connected to mortgage brokering clearly and prominently display the brokerage's authorized name and license number; if a specific broker or agent is named in that material, their own licensed name and an approved title have to appear too. Information that misrepresents the product, or is incomplete enough to misrepresent it, is prohibited outright, and a brokerage or individual has to do business only under the exact name on their license — no unregistered "brand" name substituting for it. FSRA has also put forward specific proposed guidance requiring that any advertising built around a "team" name keep the authorizing brokerage's own name and license number just as prominent, so a team brand can't obscure which licensed brokerage actually stands behind it.
British Columbia: no false or misleading statements, and your registered name has to appear
BC's governing legislation prohibits a mortgage broker from making any false, misleading, or deceptive statement in an advertisement, circular, pamphlet, or similar material, and separately requires that the name under which the broker is actually registered appear in that same material. BCFSA has layered additional, more specific rules on top of that baseline for "Team" advertising: a team can't advertise as a team until its registration is actually approved, any advertising has to use the team's name exactly as BCFSA approved it, an unlicensed assistant included in team advertising has to be clearly marked as unlicensed so the public isn't misled about who's actually authorized to advise them, and the related brokerage itself must be named in all of that team's advertising.
Alberta: strict limits on what a brand name can even say
RECA took a different, more structural approach, effective a rule change in October 2019: mortgage brokers and mortgage teams (along with their real estate counterparts) are barred from using a specific list of corporate-sounding words in their branding — Agency, Associates, Brokerage, Brokers, Company, Corporation, Corp., Inc., Ltd., LLC, LLP, Properties, and Property — with a narrow carve-out for "Mortgage" or "Mortgages" directly followed by "Team" or "Group." On top of that word restriction, the brokerage's own name or logo has to be at least as prominent as any team or individual branding next to it, positioned immediately adjacent rather than off to the side, and a licensed individual's actual name has to appear on every piece of advertising, not just the brand name.
The common thread, and what it doesn't cover
Every province covered here requires some form of true, non-misleading advertising tied back to a specific, checkable license or registration — the same underlying idea Regulation N enforces federally in the US, just implemented province by province instead of through one federal rule. None of it is a single, Canada-wide advertising rule, so confirming what a specific ad is actually required to disclose still means knowing which province's law applies. And advertising-content rules are a distinct question from whether a broker discloses their own lender relationship before you rely on a recommendation — see our separate explainer on conflict-of-interest disclosure requirements for that.