Mortgage Broker Terms

1. Accepting these terms

1.1 You accept these terms when you tick the box agreeing to them, claim or request a profile, or use your BrokerScore dashboard. If you don’t agree, please don’t claim or use a profile.

1.2 If you accept on behalf of a business, you confirm you’re authorised to bind that business, and “you” includes the business and the people who use the account for it.

1.3 These terms sit alongside our Terms of use and Privacy policy, and the site rules we publish for mortgage brokers, including How we rank mortgage brokers, our review rules and the plan rules on our pricing pages (together, the “Site Rules”). If anything conflicts, these terms apply. Our Privacy policy explains how we handle your personal information, including how we use automated processes to calculate the BrokerScore.

2. What some words mean

2.1 “BrokerScore” on its own means the score out of 10 we give a mortgage broker. “The platform” means the BrokerScore website, dashboard, emails, badges and related services.

2.2 “Profile” means your public page and listings on the platform. “Your content” means anything you or your team add, including text, photos, video, case studies, answers and replies.

2.3 “Consumer” means a person using the platform to find or contact a mortgage broker. “Enquiry” means a message a consumer sends you through the platform.

2.4 “Plan” means the Free, Pro or Premier plan, or any free trial, your profile is on.

3. Who can have a profile

3.1 You must hold an Australian credit licence, or be a credit representative of a licensee, that allows you to provide credit assistance for home loans.

3.2 The details you give us must be true, complete and kept up to date. That includes your name, business, licence or credit representative number, contact details, lenders, specialties and the suburbs you serve.

3.3 You must tell us within 5 business days if your licence or authorisation is suspended, cancelled or changed, or if you’re banned or disqualified by ASIC or a court. We may suspend your profile until it’s resolved.

3.4 You agree we can check your details against the ASIC registers and other public sources, and ask you for evidence.

3.5 Each profile can be claimed by one account. Keep your sign-in links and email account secure. You’re responsible for anything done through your account, unless it happened because we breached these terms or someone got access without any fault on your part.

3.6 If you’re a credit representative, you’re responsible for getting any approval your licensee requires for your profile and content, and you confirm you have it.

4. Being listed on BrokerScore

4.1 You agree to be listed on the platform. You consent to us publishing, on your profile, in search results, on suburb and city pages, in emails to consumers and in badges: your details from public registers; your content; genuine ratings and reviews about you that we publish under our review rules (including Google ratings and reviews we can accurately match to you); your BrokerScore; your rankings, labels and placements (such as Top Broker, Featured and Verified); and statistics about your activity on the platform, such as how quickly you respond. We may also use your name, current BrokerScore and reviews in promoting the platform, as long as what we say is accurate and doesn’t suggest you endorse us. You can ask us to stop using them in our advertising at any time.

4.2 We build some profiles from public information before anyone claims them. If you close your account or these terms end, we may keep a basic listing built from public information, and genuine reviews about you, on the platform, and your consent in clause 4.1 continues for them. We won’t show a BrokerScore, Top Broker label or Featured placement on a closed profile. We’ll take reasonable steps to correct anything you show us is inaccurate, and we’ll remove anything we’re legally required to remove.

4.3 We decide how the platform looks and works, including which mortgage brokers appear on which pages, in what order and with what labels, in line with the Site Rules.

4.4 Because you’ve consented to these publications, you agree you won’t bring a defamation claim about any of them, as long as we publish them in line with these terms and the Site Rules.

5. The BrokerScore and rankings

5.1 Your BrokerScore is our assessment, made with our own method, of things we can measure about you. These include what clients say (ratings and reviews, how many there are and how recent they are), how you look after people (such as how quickly you respond), how complete and trustworthy your profile is and the checks we’ve been able to make, and, where it’s switched on, what you contribute through Ask a Broker.

5.2 We don’t publish the exact formula or its weightings. We may change the method at any time to keep it fair, accurate and hard to game. Any change applies to all mortgage brokers in the same way. We publish a plain English summary of the factors that make up the BrokerScore, and update it when we change the method. If we make a change that is likely to significantly lower many mortgage brokers’ scores, we’ll tell you at least 14 days before it takes effect.

5.3 Paying for a plan never buys a higher BrokerScore or a Top Broker place. Plan limits, such as enquiries held on the Free plan or features only paid plans have, never count against your BrokerScore. Featured placements are paid, are always labelled Featured, and need a BrokerScore of at least 7.0.

5.4 We don’t promise any particular BrokerScore, ranking, placement, number of views, enquiries or clients, or any amount of business. Your BrokerScore can go up or down as new information comes in.

5.5 If we reasonably suspect anyone has tried to manipulate a BrokerScore or reviews (for example with fake reviews, incentives or automated activity), we may hold, adjust or remove the affected score, reviews or placements while we look into it. We’ll tell you what we’ve done and why within 2 business days, give you a chance to respond, and aim to finish our review within 20 business days.

5.6 If you think your BrokerScore is based on wrong facts (for example, a review that isn’t about you, or a response time recorded in error), tell us through our contact page. We’ll look at it in good faith and reply within 10 business days, and correct any facts that are wrong. We don’t change the method itself because of a single request.

5.7 Your BrokerScore, rankings and labels are our opinion, formed using our method and the information we hold at the time. Your profile shows the main information your BrokerScore is based on, such as your number of reviews, your average rating and your response times. You’ve consented to us publishing them as described in clause 4.

6. Reviews and replies

6.1 Reviews must be genuine and come from real clients. You must not, and must not ask or allow anyone else to: write reviews about yourself or your business; write reviews about competitors; or post reviews from staff, family, friends or business partners as if they were clients.

6.2 You must not offer or give anything in return for a review or a higher rating, including money, discounts, gifts, prizes, donations or entry into a draw. You may ask clients for an honest review.

6.3 You must not invite only the clients you expect to be happy, or discourage clients from leaving a negative review.

6.4 You must not pressure, threaten or offer anything to a consumer to change or remove a review.

6.5 We check reviews before they go live and decide which to publish, edit for privacy or remove under our review rules. We don’t change the meaning of a review. You can report a review you believe breaks those rules or is defamatory through our contact page. We’ll acknowledge your report within 2 business days and, within 7 days, either remove the review, hide it while we look into it, or tell you why we’re keeping it. We won’t remove a genuine review just because it’s negative.

6.6 Replies to reviews must be honest and professional, and must not include a client’s personal or loan details, or anything abusive or threatening. We may remove a reply that breaks these rules.

6.7 If you connect your Google Business Profile, you authorise us to read the listing you choose and to show its rating, review count and reviews on your profile, with each reviewer’s Google display name. We don’t post, edit or reply to reviews on your behalf. You can disconnect at any time from your dashboard, and we then delete the connection and the copied reviews. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by Google.

7. Enquiries and consumers’ personal information

7.1 When a consumer sends you an enquiry, they share their personal information with you so you can respond and, if they wish, help them with credit. You must use it only for that purpose.

7.2 You must handle consumers’ personal information in line with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles, whether or not that Act would otherwise apply to you. You must keep it secure, and must not sell or share it, or add the consumer to marketing lists without their consent.

7.3 You must comply with the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) and the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 (Cth) when contacting consumers.

7.4 You should respond to enquiries promptly, and mark them as replied in your dashboard. How quickly you respond is part of your BrokerScore.

7.5 On the Free plan, enquiries over your monthly limit are held. You’ll see that you have one, but not the consumer’s details. If you don’t upgrade within 48 hours, we may suggest other mortgage brokers to that consumer. We won’t give your held enquiry’s details to any other mortgage broker.

7.6 If you tell us you can’t help a consumer, or don’t respond, we may suggest other mortgage brokers to them.

8. Following the rules of the platform

8.1 You must follow these terms and the Site Rules, and comply with all laws that apply to you, including the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth) and the National Credit Code, your best interests and conflict obligations, the Australian Consumer Law, and ASIC’s guidance on advertising credit.

8.2 Your content must be accurate and up to date, and must not be false, misleading or deceptive. It must not promise loan approval, a particular rate or a particular outcome.

8.3 Answers you give through Ask a Broker must be general information only. They must not suggest that a particular person apply for a particular credit contract or with a particular lender, and must not ask consumers to share personal or financial details publicly.

8.4 You must not: try to manipulate your BrokerScore, rankings or reviews; create more than one account or a profile for someone else without their authority; impersonate anyone; scrape, copy or bulk download the platform or its data; probe, overload or interfere with its security or operation; upload anything unlawful, offensive or harmful (including malware); or use the platform to contact consumers who haven’t sent you an enquiry.

8.5 Tell us straight away if you become aware of a security issue, a data breach involving consumer information from the platform, or misuse of your account.

9. Your content

9.1 You keep ownership of your content. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, copy, display, resize, crop, format, translate and publish it on the platform and in promoting the platform (including in emails, social media and advertising), for as long as you have a profile and for a reasonable time after it ends to remove it from our systems and materials.

9.2 You confirm you have all the rights and permissions needed for your content, including the consent of any person shown in a photo or video, and that it doesn’t infringe anyone’s rights.

9.3 We may edit your content for format, privacy or length, without changing its meaning. We may remove content that breaks these terms or the Site Rules or that we reasonably believe could expose us or anyone else to legal risk. We’ll tell you when we remove something, unless we can’t lawfully do so.

10. Trust badge and our brand

10.1 While your profile is active and you’re following these terms, you may display the BrokerScore trust badge on your website, email signature and marketing, using the code from your dashboard so it always shows your current score. You must not alter it, show an old or made up score, or suggest we endorse you beyond what the badge shows.

10.2 We own the BrokerScore name, logos, the BrokerScore method and the data and design of the platform. Apart from the badge and factual statements of your current BrokerScore or reviews with a link to your profile, you need our written permission to use our name or logos.

10.3 You must remove the badge and stop referring to your BrokerScore within 14 days of your profile being suspended or closed.

11. Plans, fees and billing

11.1 The features and limits of each plan, and their prices, are set out on our pricing and plan pages. Prices are in Australian dollars and exclude GST, which we add to your invoice.

11.2 Paid plans are shown as a monthly price but are billed once a year in advance, so each charge is 12 times the monthly price, plus GST. We charge your card through our payment provider, Stripe. Paid plans renew automatically each year at the price then current unless you cancel before the renewal date. You can cancel at any time in your dashboard. We’ll email you about 30 days before each renewal with the renewal date, the amount and how to cancel.

11.3 If you upgrade, the new features start straight away and we charge the difference for the rest of your billing year. If you downgrade or cancel, you keep your current plan until the end of the year you’ve paid for, and the change applies at renewal.

11.4 Except where these terms or the law say otherwise, fees already paid aren’t refundable. We’ll refund the unused part of any fees you’ve prepaid if: we end these terms under clause 13.3; you end them after a change under clause 19; we can no longer give you a Premier place under clause 12.3; or we close your account for a reason that isn’t your breach of these terms.

11.5 We may change our prices. A new price applies from your next renewal, and we’ll give you at least 30 days’ notice by email.

11.6 If a payment fails and isn’t fixed within 14 days, we may move your profile to the Free plan.

11.7 Free trials need no card. When one ends, your profile moves to the Free plan unless you choose a paid plan. Promo codes we give you are for you only, can’t be exchanged for cash, apply to the first payment unless we say otherwise, and may come with conditions set out when we give them to you.

11.8 You don’t pay us any commission, referral fee or other payment based on enquiries you receive or loans you write. Unless we agree otherwise with you in writing, our only charges are the plan fees described in these terms.

12. Premier suburbs and Featured placements

12.1 Premier members choose one Premier suburb: their own suburb or one next to it. Each suburb has a limited number of Premier places, given on a first come basis. You can change your Premier suburb no more than once every 30 days, if a place is free.

12.2 A Featured placement shows only while your BrokerScore is at least 7.0 and your profile is active. It may be shared with other Premier members and may rotate. We don’t promise any number of views or enquiries.

12.3 We may change page layouts, suburb boundaries and neighbouring suburbs from time to time. If a change means we can no longer give you a Premier place you’ve paid for, we’ll offer you another suburb or a refund of the unused part of your fees for that plan.

13. Suspension and ending these terms

13.1 You can cancel your paid plan at any time in your dashboard, and close your account at any time by contacting us. Cancelling stops your plan renewing, and you keep it until the end of the year you’ve paid for. Closing your account doesn’t remove a basic listing or reviews (see clause 4.2).

13.2 We may suspend or close your account, or remove your profile from Featured and Top Broker placements, if you materially breach these terms or the Site Rules and don’t fix it within 10 business days of us asking. We can act straight away, telling you why, if: you no longer hold a credit licence or authorisation; you’ve been banned or disqualified; you’ve written, bought or incentivised fake reviews; you’ve acted fraudulently or misused consumers’ personal information; or we reasonably believe your listing poses a serious risk of harm to consumers. If we act on that last ground, we’ll consider any response you give us within 10 business days.

13.3 We may end these terms for any other reason with at least 30 days’ notice, and refund the unused part of any fees you’ve prepaid.

13.4 When these terms end, your paid features stop and you must stop using the badge (clause 10). Clause 4 still applies to a basic listing and reviews. Clauses that by their nature should continue, including 4, 9, 10.3, 11.4, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 20, keep applying.

14. What we’re responsible for

14.1 We’ll provide the platform with due care and skill. We work to keep it available, accurate and secure, but we can’t promise it will always be available, error free or uninterrupted.

14.2 BrokerScore is a directory and review platform. We don’t provide credit assistance or credit advice, and we’re not a party to anything between you and a consumer. We don’t check what consumers tell you in an enquiry.

14.3 Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or changes any right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law or any other law that can’t be excluded.

15. Limits on liability

15.1 To the extent the law allows, neither you nor we are liable to the other for any indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profits, revenue, business, opportunity or goodwill, arising from these terms or the platform.

15.2 To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for all claims arising from these terms or the platform is limited to the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, or $100 if you paid nothing.

15.3 Where the Australian Consumer Law lets us limit our liability for a failure to meet a consumer guarantee, our liability is limited to supplying the services again or paying the cost of having them supplied again.

15.4 These limits don’t apply to liability for fraud or dishonesty, wilful misconduct, death or personal injury, or anything that can’t lawfully be limited.

16. Your responsibility for claims about you

16.1 You indemnify us against any loss, cost (including reasonable legal costs) or liability we incur because of a claim by a third party (including a consumer or regulator) arising from: your content; your dealings with consumers, including any credit assistance you provide; your misuse of consumers’ personal information; or your breach of these terms or the law.

16.2 Your indemnity is reduced to the extent the loss was caused or contributed to by our negligence, breach of these terms or wrongdoing. Clause 15.1 applies to it, and your liability under it is limited to the greater of $10,000 and the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, except for loss caused by your fraud, your misuse of consumers’ personal information or your breach of clause 6.

17. Claims and disputes

17.1 If you have a concern about your BrokerScore, a review, a placement or anything else to do with the platform, you agree to raise it with us first, using the review process in clause 5 or by giving us written notice of the dispute.

17.2 If a dispute isn’t resolved within 20 business days of the notice, either of us may refer it to mediation with the Resolution Institute in Brisbane. Each of us pays our own costs and we share the mediator’s fees equally. Neither of us may start court proceedings about a dispute until mediation has ended, except to seek urgent interim relief.

17.3 You agree you won’t bring a claim in defamation or injurious falsehood against us, or our officers, employees or contractors, about anything you’ve consented to in clause 4, as long as we published it in line with these terms and the Site Rules. Before starting any other proceedings about your BrokerScore, a ranking, label or placement, or a review, you agree to first use the correction process in clause 5.6 or the reporting process in clause 6.5, and to give us at least 10 business days to respond. This clause doesn’t limit any claim that we acted dishonestly, in bad faith or in breach of these terms, or any right you have that the law doesn’t allow to be excluded.

17.4 Nothing in this clause stops you from complaining to, or giving information to, a regulator, court or tribunal, or from getting legal advice.

18. Statements about BrokerScore

18.1 You must not make or publish any statement of fact about Broker Score Pty Ltd, the platform, the BrokerScore or our officers, employees or contractors that you know is false or misleading, or that you make without caring whether it’s true.

18.2 You must not encourage or help anyone else, including through other review sites or social media, to make such a statement.

18.3 This clause doesn’t stop you from making a true statement, expressing an honest opinion, giving a genuine review of our services, raising a concern with us, complaining to or giving information to a regulator, court or tribunal, getting legal advice, or saying anything you’re required by law to say.

19. Changes to these terms and the Site Rules

19.1 We may change these terms or the Site Rules to reflect changes in the law, our services, security or how the platform works.

19.2 If a change is likely to be materially worse for you, we’ll email you at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you don’t want to accept it, you can close your account before the change takes effect, and we’ll refund the unused part of any fees you’ve prepaid. A change is materially worse for you if it increases what you pay, reduces the features of your paid plan, or reduces your rights under these terms.

19.3 We may ask you to accept the updated terms before you next use your dashboard. Other changes take effect when we publish them, and we keep a dated record of changes on this page.

20. General

20.1 We’ll send notices to the email address on your account, and you can send notices to us through our contact page. A notice by email is received when it’s sent, unless the sender gets a message that it wasn’t delivered.

20.2 These terms are governed by the laws of Queensland, and each of us submits to the courts of Queensland and courts that can hear appeals from them.

20.3 You may not transfer your profile, account or rights under these terms without our written consent. We may transfer them to anyone who takes over the platform and agrees to be bound by these terms, and we’ll tell you if we do.

20.4 If any part of these terms is invalid or unenforceable, it is read down or removed to the extent needed, and the rest continues.

20.5 These terms, together with the documents they refer to, are the whole agreement between us about the platform. A failure or delay in enforcing a right isn’t a waiver of it.

20.6 We’re independent businesses. Nothing in these terms makes either of us the other’s agent, partner or employee. We don’t provide credit assistance, don’t act between you and any lender, and don’t receive any payment that depends on whether a consumer gets a loan.

20.7 We’re not liable for a delay or failure caused by something outside our reasonable control, such as an outage at a hosting or payment provider. We’ll tell you about it and work to fix it as quickly as we reasonably can.

20.8 We’ll send you service emails about your account, enquiries, reviews and billing. We may also send you news and offers about BrokerScore, and you can unsubscribe from those at any time.