- Onboarding
The offshore team grew 54%. The review step never moved.
Production scaled offshore. The signoff stayed where it always was.
Mortgage Professional reported that mortgage aggregator LMG grew its Philippines-based outsourcing arm by 54% in 12 months. The count went from 193 to 298 dedicated specialists. The arm handles loan processing, documentation and back-book servicing for brokers. Its general manager named rising operating costs as the driver. Nothing new there. The number worth stopping on sits further down the piece.
Where the signoff sat
Mortgage Professional quoted Tom Kelly, a director at two brokerages using four LMG specialists, describing the workflow in three steps. The offshore team renames and processes files, onshore staff assess the application, and the broker signs off. Only the first step moved. Moving production offshore and assuming the review step got cheaper along with it is the practice this story argues against without meaning to. A vendor sells production. Review is the half that stays with the firm.
Production moved. Judgment did not.
What the hours bought
LMG said its specialists save business owners up to 160 hours a month. Kelly told Mortgage Professional his onshore staff now complete four touchpoints with every client during the loan process. The two brokerages settled $310 million in FY26, with lodgements up 52% and settlements up 68%, according to the report.
So the recovered hours went into client contact rather than into pushing more files. Most firms spend them the other way. The Thomson Reuters Institute tracks demand by practice area, and when a line of work rises the reflex is to add people who produce. Intake rarely gets the hours. It is usually where the leak is. The hours are the asset. Where they land is the decision.
The part that transfers
Mortgage broking is not law. A broker's signoff is a commercial check rather than a duty a bar rule imposes, and an Australian aggregator's growth figure tells a US managing partner nothing about what may be delegated. LMG's growth is on the record. The quality claim behind it is not. What transfers is the shape: named production offshore, named assessment onshore, one signature at the end.
The detail I would have asked about first is in the last third of the story. Three of the four specialists at those brokerages have provided full-time support for two years. Four people, three of them two years in the same seat. Retention, not rate.
The 54% is LMG's news. The two years is the line a firm should read.
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