Equipment Finance Broker Australia: How the Job Works and How Brokers Get Paid (2026)

2026-08-27

What an equipment finance broker actually does in Australia, how commission is paid on a chattel mortgage, which funders write commercial asset paper, and how to start.

Australian businesses buy very little equipment with cash. Excavators, prime movers, CNC machines, coffee roasters, dental chairs and tractors are almost always funded — and most of that paper is introduced by a broker, not written over a bank counter. That is the whole opportunity: an equipment finance broker sits between the business that needs the asset and the funder that will write it.

What does an equipment finance broker do in Australia?

You source a commercial client who is buying an asset, work out what they can service, package the deal (ABN, GST registration, financials or a low-doc declaration, asset invoice, equipment details), and submit it to the funder most likely to approve it at the best rate. When the funder settles, they pay you a commission. You are an introducer and a packager — you do not lend your own money and you do not hold the security.

Do you need a licence to broker equipment finance in Australia?

This is the question that stops most people, and the answer is more encouraging than they expect. Pure commercial asset finance — a chattel mortgage or finance lease to a company or ABN holder for business use — sits outside the National Consumer Credit Protection Act, so an Australian Credit Licence is not triggered the way it is for home loans or consumer car loans. The moment a deal is for personal, domestic or household use, you are in consumer credit and you need to be a licensee or a credit representative.

In practice almost every working broker still ends up holding a Certificate IV in Finance and Mortgage Broking, joining the MFAA or FBAA, and operating under an aggregator such as Connective, AFG, LMG or COG. The aggregator gives you funder accreditations, a commission structure and compliance cover. Confirm your own position with ASIC and your aggregator before you write your first deal — this article is general information, not legal advice.

How is equipment finance broker commission calculated?

Australian asset finance commission usually comes in two parts. There is an upfront commission paid by the funder as a percentage of the amount financed — commonly in the low single digits — and there is brokerage or origination fee you may charge the client and have capitalised into the contract, which must be disclosed. Some funders also pay a rate-for-risk margin where you can load the rate within a permitted band.

The maths is simple and worth internalising. A $180,000 tipper financed at a 3% total broker return pays roughly $5,400 on one settlement. A $60,000 skid steer at 4% pays $2,400. Volume brokers live on repeat mid-ticket deals rather than waiting for one large file, because a contractor who buys a tipper this year buys a trailer next year.

Which funders write Australian equipment paper?

The market splits into tiers. The major banks — ANZ, Westpac, CBA and NAB — write clean, well-documented, asset-backed deals at the sharpest rates. Then there is a deep non-bank tier that exists specifically for broker-introduced business: Angle Finance, Metro Finance, Pepper, Selfco, Flexi Commercial, Grow, Judo and others, each with its own appetite for asset age, ABN age, property backing and industry.

Your value to the client is not access to money — it is knowing which of those funders will say yes to a five-year-old tipper bought privately by a two-year ABN with no property. That is a completely different lender to the one funding a new dental fit-out for a homeowner specialist.

Always search the PPSR before you promise anything

Used equipment in Australia routinely carries an existing security interest. Before you quote on a second-hand asset, run a search on the Personal Property Securities Register and get any payout figure in writing from the existing financier. It is the Australian equivalent of a UCC search in the United States, it costs a few dollars, and doing it habitually is what makes a funder treat you as a professional source rather than a lead forwarder.

Where Australian equipment deals actually come from

Dealers and vendors — earthmoving, truck, forklift, agricultural and hospitality dealers all need a finance answer at the point of sale. One good vendor relationship can produce a deal a month indefinitely.
Auction houses and used yards — Pickles, Grays and the machinery yards move enormous volumes of used gear that needs funding fast.
Trade networks — civil contractors, transport operators, farmers and workshop owners buy repeatedly and refer laterally.
Accountants and bookkeepers — they see the capex decision before anyone else and they are the highest-quality referral source in the country.

How long before a new broker writes their first deal?

Realistically, expect the first settlement within one to three months of getting accredited and prospecting daily. The bottleneck is almost never the training — it is how many vendors and business owners you actually speak to in your first eight weeks. Brokers who treat it as a daily outreach discipline get there fast; brokers who wait for referrals do not.

Running it like a business, not a side hustle

Every enquiry needs to go into a pipeline with the asset, the amount, the product type and the next action. Our broker CRM tracks deals through submission, approval, documents and settlement, with a lender-document checklist so nothing stalls waiting on a driver''s licence copy. The training and the CRM are the same $49.99 — you learn the deal and then run it in the tool.