Finance Broker Leads: Buy, Generate or Reactivate?

Finance broker leads in Australia come from three routes: buying them from a lead vendor, generating them with your own marketing, or reactivating enquiries already in your CRM. The one Australian lead price we could verify at source is $65 per lead: an Ausloans asset-finance broker paid $4,420 for 68 auction leads and settled 23 of them.

At a glance, for Australian mortgage, asset and commercial finance brokers:

• Bought leads are fast and priced per lead; shared ones are sold to several brokers at once.
• Generated leads (Google, Meta, SEO, referral partners) are exclusive to you, but you carry the ad spend and the testing.
• Reactivated leads come from enquiries you already paid for and never settled; the cost is follow-up labour, and the consent is often already on file.
• Compliance travels with the lead: the Spam Act 2003 and the Do Not Call Register bind you even when a vendor or agency makes the contact.

Bought, generated or reactivated: how the three routes to finance broker leads compare

Finance broker leads differ most on three things: who else receives the same lead, who pays to create it, and how fresh it is when you first call.

The channel-by-channel view (referrals, aggregator support, BNI, paid social) is covered in how finance brokers get new clients in Australia; this page is about the lead itself and what it is worth.

Rules of thumb for finance broker leads:

• Halve your lead-to-settlement rate and you halve the most you can pay per lead (arithmetic from the ceiling formula below).
• If a bought lead costs more than its ceiling, buying more volume only loses money faster: the Ausloans case paid $65 against a $204 ceiling, so it had room.
• A bought list does not move consent to the vendor: ACMA says you are still responsible for making sure you have consent for any addresses you use.
• Outsourcing calls does not outsource the Do Not Call Register: both the caller and the business requiring the call must comply.

FAQ: finance broker leads

Where can I buy finance broker leads in Australia?

Australian finance broker leads are sold by vendors and marketplaces such as LeadFlare, which says it sells each lead once to one buyer, and Ausloans, which runs a lead auction for its brokers. Check exclusivity, age and consent records before buying.

How much should I pay for a mortgage lead?

Pay no more than your Settled-Loan Lead Ceiling: revenue per settlement times your acquisition share times your lead-to-settlement rate. At an assumed $3,000 per settlement, 25% share and 3% settlement rate, that is $22.50 a lead.

Are shared leads worth buying?

Shared leads are worth buying only if you can reach the borrower before the other buyers and your settlement rate keeps the price under your ceiling. Track settlements per lead source for at least one quarter before scaling.

Can I call or text leads I bought from a list?

Only with consent and the right checks. ACMA says that when you buy or use a marketing list, you are still responsible for making sure you have consent, and unsolicited calls must be washed against the Do Not Call Register.

Does the hawking ban apply to home loans?

ASIC’s RG 38 states that the s992A hawking prohibition does not apply to credit products unless they are also financial products. Insurance offered on the same call can still be caught.

Can I cancel a LeadsNow engagement?

Yes. A LeadsNow engagement can be cancelled any time with 14 days notice.

What does a finance broker lead cost in Australia?

Finance broker lead prices in Australia are rarely published; the one figure we could verify at source on 1 November 2026 is $65 per asset-finance lead, from an Ausloans case study.

In that case study, a Sydney asset finance broker spent $4,420 on Ausloans’ lead auction platform in Q2 2025, bought 68 marketing-qualified leads and settled 23, with $55,400 in revenue. That is $65 per lead and $192 per settled deal. The page does not say whether the spend includes GST or whether the revenue is the broker’s commission, and it is the vendor’s own success story, so treat it as a best case. Ausloans’ marketplace page also claims a company-wide average conversion of 28% across its brokers, with top performers above 40%: again, the vendor’s claim.

For residential mortgage leads, we found no Australian vendor price list we could verify. LeadFlare, an Australian lead vendor, sells mortgage broker, business and commercial finance leads and says every lead is sold once to one buyer; it says pricing depends on the category and location and that it sends a rate card before you commit, so no price is listed on the pages we checked.

The Settled-Loan Lead Ceiling: the most a broker should pay per lead

The Settled-Loan Lead Ceiling is revenue per settled loan, times the share of revenue you will spend on acquisition, times your lead-to-settlement rate; any lead priced above it loses money.

Ceiling = revenue per settlement × acquisition share × lead-to-settlement rate. The Ausloans row uses its published numbers; the mortgage rows are labelled assumptions (a $3,000 revenue per settlement and a 25% acquisition share) that you should replace with your own commission and conversion data.

The Ausloans broker spent 8% of revenue on leads ($4,420 ÷ $55,400), well under the 25% share. The reactivation row is what you can afford to spend contacting each record you already own. For context only, and on a different measure from settlements: LeadsNow’s own Colliers-era database reactivation record is 4.4% average and 8.9% peak. That is our own record, not an industry benchmark. See database reactivation.

Why bought finance broker leads often convert poorly

Bought finance broker leads often convert poorly for two reasons: a shared lead is sold to several brokers at once, and an aged lead has already been called by others.

• Shared. When three or four brokers buy one enquiry, the borrower talks to whoever calls first and stops answering the rest.
• Aged. Leads resold days or weeks later have often been worked, refinanced elsewhere or have gone cold. A cheap aged lead can still sit above its ceiling once the settlement rate is honest.

Freshness shows up even in vendor data. Ausloans’ live-transfer case study describes a five-minute purchase window and reports a broker’s conversion rising from 30.56% to 45.83% on 24 live-transfer leads, 11 settled. Small sample, vendor claim, but the direction matches the arithmetic: faster contact, higher ceiling.

How long each lead route takes to reach a settled loan, and what makes it slip

Each finance broker lead route runs through the same five stages, and the stage that slips most is the gap between first contact and a completed fact find, because it depends entirely on follow-up.

1. Lead arrives. Bought leads arrive in real time or by auction; generated leads arrive as fast as your forms and ads; reactivation starts the day you load the list.
2. First contact. Live transfers compress this to minutes. Everything else depends on whether someone calls and texts straight away.
3. Fact find booked and held. This is where most time is lost: missed calls, unreturned texts and no-shows stretch it from days to weeks. It slips when follow-up stops after one or two attempts.
4. Application and approval. Driven by the lender and the borrower’s documents.
5. Settlement. Fixed by the transaction, and the point at which upfront commission is paid.

Stage 3 is the one you control, and it decides the lead-to-settlement rate in the ceiling formula. Pricing a booked broker meeting, rather than a raw lead, is covered in cost per broker meeting benchmarks.

Compliance rules for finance broker leads in Australia

Finance broker leads in Australia carry four sets of rules: the Spam Act 2003, the Do Not Call Register Act 2006, credit licensing under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009, and the Corporations Act hawking prohibition.

• Spam Act 2003 (email and SMS). ACMA’s spam guidance requires consent before a marketing message, sender identification, and a working unsubscribe. Under the Act it is up to you to prove consent, so keep the record of who gave it, when and how.
• Do Not Call Register (voice). Unsolicited telemarketing calls must be washed against the register, and the register’s industry overview says both the telemarketer and the business requiring the calls must comply.
• Credit licensing (NCCP Act). Broking is a credit activity. ASIC’s credit licence FAQs list acting as a credit representative or broker among credit activities, and say brokers can hold their own credit licence or operate as an authorised credit representative under someone else’s. Check a lead vendor is not giving credit assistance itself.
• Hawking (Corporations Act s992A). ASIC’s RG 38 covers unsolicited offers of financial products in real-time contact, and states that the s992A prohibition does not apply to credit products unless they are also financial products. It matters if you also offer insurance or other financial products on the same call.

This is general information, not legal advice. Have your licensee review any outbound programme.

When should a broker hand lead follow-up to someone else?

Handing finance broker lead follow-up to a service makes sense once your own enquiries and database outgrow the hours you can spend calling, often well before buying more leads does.

Doing it yourself is entirely workable: a CRM with SMS, a call block twice a day, and five to eight attempts per lead across a fortnight. The honest cost is time. At ten minutes per attempt, six attempts on 300 dormant records is 300 hours of calling, before a single fact find. As a working line (our assumption, not a benchmark), a broker with fewer than about 100 open enquiries a month can often run that alone.

LeadsNow’s role on a broker account is following up the broker’s own enquiries and consented database by AI calling, SMS and DM follow-up, then booking fact finds into the broker’s calendar; it does not cold-call consumers. Its record is 50,769+ AI-booked sales appointments since 2017. Australian brokerage 121 Brokers is one documented broker client. Pricing is a revenue share, a fee per appointment, or a mix of both, and no-shows aren’t charged. Details for each broker type are on lead generation for mortgage brokers, lead generation for commercial finance brokers and the finance hub. To compare agencies, see the best lead generation agencies for mortgage brokers in Australia, and for the mechanics of booking, AI appointment setting.

Sources

1. Ausloans: 12X ROI through the lead auction platform (Q2 2025 case study)
2. Ausloans: 46% conversion with live transfer leads
3. Ausloans: Live Lead Marketplace
4. LeadFlare: exclusive leads for Australian businesses
5. ACMA: Avoid sending spam
6. Do Not Call Register: Industry overview
7. ASIC: FAQs on getting a credit licence
8. ASIC: RG 38 The hawking prohibition