A fair, side-by-side comparison of Ownwell and BrokerPlus for Canadian mortgage brokers. Honest look at what each platform does well, where they differ, and how to pick the right fit.
Every few months a Canadian mortgage broker emails us asking how BrokerPlus compares to Ownwell. It’s a fair question. On paper, both platforms sit in a similar zone of the broker tech stack: the part that comes after the CRM and handles your existing book. In practice, they solve different problems, and which one fits depends on what you’re trying to do.
We build BrokerPlus so we have an obvious bias. We’ve tried to check it. Ownwell is a well-built Canadian platform with a product philosophy we respect and a feature (Adopt My Mortgage) we don’t have an equivalent to. The goal isn’t to argue that BrokerPlus is better. It’s to help you decide which actually fits your brokerage.
We think both tools are legitimate. We think they’re different. Here’s how.
Ownwell is a client engagement and retention platform. The core product is an automated monthly homeowner report sent to each of a broker’s past clients, with personalized insights about home value, equity position, and mortgage opportunities. The goal is staying in front of clients between deals so they don’t drift to the bank at renewal or look elsewhere for equity products. On top of that, Ownwell has Adopt My Mortgage, which extends the platform to realtor referral partners, giving the broker exposure to homeowners not yet in their database.
BrokerPlus is a deal intelligence and compliance platform. The core product scans a broker’s existing client database and surfaces every refinance, renewal, HELOC, reverse mortgage, and debt consolidation opportunity in it, with lender-specific IRD penalty math and automated outreach from the broker’s own email address. On top of that, BrokerPlus runs integrated FINTRAC-compliant AML and PEP screening with ongoing monitoring.
The overlap is that both work with a broker’s existing book and aim to help brokers do more with clients they already have. Beyond that, the products diverge.
Several things stand out:
Adopt My Mortgage. This is Ownwell’s differentiator and nothing else in the Canadian market replicates it. The broker shares Ownwell with their realtor referral partners. Realtors give their clients access to personalized Ownwell landing pages. Homeowners opt in, receive monthly reports, and now the broker has exposure to a database of prospective clients they didn’t have before. For a broker whose biggest gap is new client acquisition rather than past client retention, this is a real and useful feature. We don’t have anything equivalent.
Client-facing design. Ownwell’s homeowner reports are genuinely well-designed. The kind of thing a homeowner actually reads. Reported open rates in the 66 to 80 percent range are far higher than typical broker email marketing benchmarks - a reasonable proxy for the quality of the client experience.
Brand and market presence. Ownwell has been in the Canadian market longer than BrokerPlus and has better-established mindshare. They’ve done the work of building a community and getting their product in front of the right audience.
Simplicity of scope. Ownwell doesn’t try to do everything. It’s a retention and engagement layer that assumes you already have a CRM and origination. That focus keeps the product clean and the learning curve short.
If what you need is help staying in front of past clients and expanding into your realtor partners’ databases, Ownwell is well-suited.
Honestly differentiated:
Lender-specific IRD penalty math. Every major Canadian lender calculates IRD differently. BrokerPlus has each major lender’s formula built in, so refinance savings numbers match the lender’s payout quote within a small margin, rather than being generic estimates. This matters when giving a client professional advice on whether to break their mortgage. Ownwell’s own documentation notes their penalty estimates use institutional rate data and that final numbers come from the lender’s payout statement - honest framing, but a different level of precision than BrokerPlus is targeting.
Integrated FINTRAC and AML screening. The biggest single difference post-Bill C-12. BrokerPlus screens every client you import against sanctions, PEP, and adverse media lists, with continuous ongoing monitoring. Principal brokers see a compliance dashboard for the full brokerage. Agents get alerts when a new hit appears. Records retain themselves in a FINTRAC-audit-ready format. Ownwell doesn’t do this. Not a criticism - Ownwell isn’t a compliance platform. But if you need the compliance layer, it matters which platform provides it.
Debt consolidation analysis. BrokerPlus runs consolidation scenarios across every refinance, HELOC, and reverse mortgage candidate. A client with $30,000 of credit card debt and $20,000 of car debt might be a marginal refinance candidate on mortgage interest alone, but a clear candidate once you roll in consolidation savings. The platform surfaces both numbers automatically.
Automated outreach with follow-up logic. BrokerPlus reaches out on your behalf. Emails go from your email address with templates you fully customize. If a client doesn’t respond, follow-ups fire on their own on a cadence you set. BrokerPlus never appears in client communications. Ownwell’s outreach is advisory-only monthly reports - a different philosophy.
Interactive client reports that update your dashboard. When a BrokerPlus client report goes to a homeowner and they update their home value, mortgage balance, or address, those edits sync back to the broker’s dashboard with a notification. The client is keeping your database current for you. Cheapest way to keep your book clean.
Pricing structure. BrokerPlus is $99 CAD per month, flat, regardless of book size, with the first 10 AML screenings per agent included. Ownwell starts at $125 per month ($100 annual) plus $200 setup, for up to 100 clients. For a larger book, BrokerPlus’s flat pricing scales more predictably.
| Ownwell | BrokerPlus | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary use case | Client retention, engagement, realtor partnerships | Deal intelligence, book mining, compliance |
| Client acquisition (Adopt My Mortgage) | Yes, best-in-class | No |
| Monthly branded homeowner reports | Yes | Yes |
| Reports update broker dashboard when clients edit | No | Yes |
| Refinance opportunity scan | Yes (institutional estimate) | Yes (lender-specific math) |
| Lender-specific IRD penalty calculations | No | Yes |
| Debt consolidation scenario analysis | No | Yes |
| HELOC / reverse mortgage candidate ID | Equity opportunities surfaced | Dedicated flagging |
| FINTRAC / AML / PEP screening | No | Yes, integrated |
| Continuous ongoing AML monitoring | No | Yes |
| Automated outreach with follow-up logic | Advisory reports only | Yes, multi-step sequences |
| Emails sent from broker’s address (white-labeled) | Yes | Yes |
| Canadian-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Starting price | $125/mo ($100 annual) + $200 setup, up to 100 clients | $99/mo flat, unlimited |
This is a feature map, not a scorecard. You don’t pick the one with more checkmarks. The right choice depends on which columns actually matter for your brokerage.
Choose Ownwell if:
Choose BrokerPlus if:
Use both if:
A number of brokers we’ve talked to use both. They aren’t substitutes. Ownwell’s strength on the front of the funnel (acquiring new clients via referral partners) doesn’t overlap with BrokerPlus’s strength on the middle (mining an existing book).
Bill C-12 received Royal Assent on March 26, 2026, and it changed the Canadian AML landscape materially. Maximum FINTRAC penalties are now 40 times higher. The compliance program standard was rewritten to require programs that are “reasonably designed, risk-based and effective.” Compliance orders against non-compliant brokerages are now published publicly.
For a brokerage evaluating tech stack in 2026, this changes the weight you put on integrated compliance screening. A year ago, AML tooling was optional. Today it’s operational baseline. A platform that includes it natively is doing real work for your brokerage’s risk posture. A platform that doesn’t leaves you to solve it elsewhere.
This is the single biggest reason the Ownwell and BrokerPlus comparison looks different in 2026 than it would have in 2024. Both platforms are legitimately useful. The question “does the platform include compliance screening” has moved from a side feature to a material consideration.
Yes. They don’t conflict technically and solve different problems. Ownwell sits on client retention and referral partner expansion; BrokerPlus sits on deal intelligence and compliance. A broker running both would typically use Ownwell for monthly homeowner reports and Adopt My Mortgage, and BrokerPlus for the book scan, refinance math, and AML screening. The two sets of client communications need coordination to avoid over-messaging, but the tools coexist.
One of the clearer splits. Both tools work with your existing book. For new leads, Ownwell has Adopt My Mortgage and BrokerPlus doesn’t have an equivalent. If new lead acquisition is your top priority, Ownwell has an advantage there. If mining the existing book for revenue is your priority, BrokerPlus is purpose-built for that.
BrokerPlus. Ownwell doesn’t do compliance screening. BrokerPlus integrates sanctions, PEP, and adverse media screening with continuous ongoing monitoring, plus audit-ready record retention. Under Bill C-12’s effectiveness standard, this is a material functional difference.
Both platforms are designed for quick setup. BrokerPlus imports from Filogix, Velocity, Finmo, or CSV, and the initial book scan runs in minutes. Ownwell is designed to work with partial data and improve over time as clients engage. Neither requires a long implementation. Ownwell has a $200 setup fee; BrokerPlus does not.
Both platforms offer brokerage-level pricing. BrokerPlus is tiered at $100 per agent per month (1-20 agents), $85 per agent (21-50 agents), and $70 per agent (50+ agents), with the first 10 AML screenings per agent included. Ownwell has brokerage-level pricing available on request. For a mid-size brokerage focused on compliance and deal intelligence, BrokerPlus’s unit economics are typically more favourable; for a brokerage heavily oriented around realtor partnerships and client engagement, Ownwell may be closer to the right fit.
Neither is region-locked within Canada. Both work across provinces. Neither is tied to a specific lender network. BrokerPlus’s lender-specific IRD formulas cover the major Canadian lenders accounting for the bulk of broker volume across DLC, TMG, Centum, Mortgage Alliance, M3, and independents. Ownwell works with institutional data that also covers the national market.
Not currently on our roadmap. Our focus is deepening the deal intelligence and compliance capabilities of the core product through V2 (POS and document portal), V3 (lender recommendations and buy-downs), and V4 (lead generation and rate alerts). The realtor partnership acquisition model Ownwell built is a strong product, and we don’t see value in replicating it. For brokers who want that capability, Ownwell is the right tool.
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