What should you ask a mortgage adviser before you hire them?

When you bring an adviser under your Financial Advice Provider (FAP) licence, you take on their history, not just their pipeline. Most advisers interview well on production and personality, then the interview glazes over the boring part. The boring part is where the risk sits.

A good adviser strengthens your business, your client base and your lender relationships. The wrong one creates problems with your reputation, your compliance obligations, your lenders and your product providers. Ask the awkward questions early.

Order matters. Start with the factual questions and work towards the personal ones, so you've built some trust before you get to credit history and failed companies. Opening with "have you ever had a company liquidated" sets a tone you won't recover from.

1. Which lender accreditations do you actually hold?

If they hold all five main banks, there's usually nothing to find. Ask whether any accreditation has ever been declined or cancelled, roughly what share of their business goes to each lender, and whether they've had issues with any of the lenders.

If they're coming from a bank, ask directly about conduct issues. Aggregators apply to a previous bank employer first as part of accreditation, so an exit that wasn't clean can stop the process before it starts.

2. Can I see your recent file reviews?

One of the most useful questions, and often the one people avoid. You're not looking for perfection. You're looking for patterns. A failed review isn't automatically a problem: what matters is whether they've improved since, and whether the finding was a failure of the FAP's process or the adviser's own conduct.

3. Why are you leaving, and can I speak to your current group or employer?

Ask why they're moving, then verify it. Check for complaints, conduct issues, remediation, monitoring, file review concerns, clawbacks, trail book ownership, restraint of trade and how client data can lawfully transfer. Advisers routinely assume the database comes with them. Often it doesn't.

Also check what the experience actually was. Loan writing, admin and adviser support are all useful, but none of them is the same as giving advice as an adviser.

4. Any conflicts, outside interests or second jobs?

Ask about real estate, property development, building businesses, accounting or legal work, private lending, referral arrangements, related-party clients and any other income source. Include any roles or businesses held by a spouse, partner or close family member.

Then ask whether they have another job or business. If they do: how many hours, does that employer know, are there any restrictions, and when does mortgage advice become the main focus.

A conflict or a second job is not always a problem. Not recording it is.

5. Have you been involved in any company liquidations or failed businesses?

Ask broadly. Not just advice businesses, and not just companies they owned. Directorships, shareholdings, trustee companies, family businesses, personal guarantees, tax debt, creditor issues and repayment arrangements.

"I was only a shareholder" and "I was a director in name only" are both worth pushing on. Directors carry duties whether or not they ran the place day to day, and a shareholding still tells you where their money and their interests sat. You need to know what happened, what their role was, and whether anything is still unresolved.

Then check the Companies Office, the insolvency registers and the Financial Service Providers Register (FSPR) yourself. Ten minutes, free.

6. Anything in your credit, criminal or background history?

You don't need to run these yourself. Aggregators, KAN included, complete credit and criminal checks as standard before accreditation, on behalf of the lenders.

What you do need is the conversation first. Tell them the checks are coming, then ask whether there's anything to disclose: defaults, judgments, tax debt, repayment arrangements, guarantees, insolvency, criminal matters or disputes. Framing it that way tends to get a straight answer, because anything they hold back will surface anyway.

A simple test: if a bank wouldn't lend to this person or employ them, it may not want to accredit them as an adviser either.

Other things that stop accreditation

• Open dispute resolution scheme complaints

• FMA action, or deregistration from the FSPR

• Any past lender concern about document or application integrity

• Level 5 studies not completed

• Previous professional indemnity claims, or cover that can't be obtained

• Poor lapse and persistency rates, if they write risk as well

• Visa or right to work issues, or an undeclared overseas regulatory history

• Lender minimums that rule out newer advisers without a mentor in place

The point most people miss

Most accreditation problems aren't caused by the issue itself. They're caused by the issue not being mentioned upfront.

A liquidation, a credit issue, a second job, a conflict, a poor file review or a previous lender concern can be managed when it's disclosed early. It gets much harder to manage when the lender or product provider finds it first.

Final thoughts

None of this is about finding reasons to say no. Good advisers sometimes have messy histories, and the ones who tell you upfront are usually the ones worth backing. The point is knowing what you're taking on before it's on your licence.

If you want a hand with the checks, or working out whether an accreditation issue is fixable, talk to our team before you make the offer rather than after.