How to nominate a colleague for the 2026 Canadian Mortgage Awards
That specificity matters more this year than most. CMHC has projected that 1.15 million mortgages will come up for renewal across Canada in 2026, the largest single-year cohort on record, a wave that’s reshaping which broker behaviours are worth recognising. Newcomers to Canada are also the fastest-growing borrower segment, a trend detailed in CMP’s feature on the renewal wave reshaping the industry, which nominators in that space may want to reference directly.
Step 2: Further research begins
Once nominations close, the CMA research team doesn’t rely solely on what’s submitted. It draws on its own reporting through Canadian Mortgage Professional magazine to identify high performers who weren’t put forward by name, so the shortlist reflects the full field rather than just those with an engaged network behind them.
Step 3: Excellence Awardees named
Excellence Awardees are named in every category except Lifetime Achievement and notified directly by phone or email. That designation alone places a professional among the country’s top performers in their category. Each Excellence Awardee is then asked to complete a more detailed submission addressing the category criteria, kept confidential and shared only with the judging panel. Awardees are announced publicly in September.
Step 4: An independent panel decides
Detailed submissions go to an 11-member judging panel drawn from across the mortgage, real estate, and technology sectors, with voting running through October and November. Any judge with a conflict of interest in a given category must recuse themselves from it — a safeguard that’s central to what gives a CMA win its credibility in the market.
Akshay Gupta, a commercial real estate mortgage agent at Foundry Mortgage Capital Corp. in Toronto and last year’s Young Achiever of the Year, said that credibility carries beyond the ceremony itself. “I reference it in my professional profile and in client conversations,” Gupta said, “because people deserve to know the calibre of the professional structuring their deal.”
