A former mortgage broker has been banned from returning to the profession in B.C. after the provincial regulator found he submitted false or misleading information to lenders in every application investigators reviewed. Gursher Singh Bains voluntarily terminated his registration with the B.C. Financial Services Authority on Dec. 2, 2025, and signed a consent order agreement with the regulator last month. A redacted version of the document was published on the BCFSA website Thursday. CRT decision The BCFSA began investigating Bains after it became aware of a decision that went against him in the province’s Civil Resolution Tribunal, according to the consent order. In that case, the CRT ruled that Bains had been negligent in his handling of the borrowers’ application, specifically by failing to disclose to the lender that the property in question was a manufactured mobile home. The BCFSA reviewed the transaction that led to the CRT decision and found that Bains had received the information included in the mortgage application from “an intermediary” and did not take any steps to verify it with the borrowers themselves. Bains “submitted the application to the bank without having contacted the borrowers,” the consent order reads. When the bank’s appraisal revealed the property was a manufactured home—a type of property for which the lender did not provide financing—Bains told the borrowers there were no alternative financing options available before their closing date, according to the consent order. The agreement notes that the borrowers ended up paying the sellers of the property an additional $5,000 to delay the closing, then secured alternative financing without the help of Bains. After reviewing this case, the BCFSA expanded its investigation to include eight files Bains worked on between May 2022 and April 2024. The cases were “randomly selected,” according to the regulator, but all eight of them would be found to contain misleading—if not outright false—information. Fake documents submitted Of the eight files the BCFSA reviewed, five involved applications Bains sent to lenders that included documents that were not “authentic” and overstated the prospective borrowers’ incomes, assets, or both, according to the consent order. In each of the five cases, the document notes, Bains admitted to the regulator that he had not attempted to verify the information he included in the application. One such case explained in the consent order involved an application for an “equity take out” on a property in Surrey in June 2022. The application “materially overstated” the borrower’s income, and included tax documents for 2020 and 2021 that reflected “similarly inflated income figures.” The consent order indicates the BCFSA spoke to the borrower—who said he “did not recognize the mortgage application or the supporting tax documents” and “had no dealings with (Bains)”—as well as the borrower’s tax preparer, who said they had not prepared the documents contained in the application. The borrower shared authentic tax documents with the regulator that showed “significantly lower income,” according to the consent order. “Bains advised BCFSA that he did not recall the transaction, could not explain the source of the information submitted to the lender, and acknowledged that he did not verify tax documentation with the accountant or take steps to confirm its accuracy with the client,” the document reads. The three other cases the BCFSA reviewed involved misleading information. In one case, Bains submitted conflicting information about a borrower’s profession and income across multiple applications to multiple lenders. In another, he represented to a lender that a property would be “100 per cent owner occupied,” then failed to update the application when he learned that the borrower was unsure whether the property would be their home or an investment. Lastly, Bains submitted an application for a second mortgage that failed to disclose the existence of a first mortgage on the property, according to the BCFSA. ‘Prejudicial to the public interest’ In the consent order agreement, Bains acknowledged that he had “relied on referral sources or third parties to obtain borrower information and documentation,” had not independently verified such information and had not contacted borrowers directly in each of the transactions. The consent order describes Bains’ conduct as “prejudicial to the public interest,” and lists four ways in which he violated the provincial Mortgage Brokers Act: Bains had no prior history of BCFSA discipline, according to the consent order. In addition to agreeing not to re-apply for registration as a mortgage broker and to be “ineligible” to do so, Bains also agreed to pay the regulator an administrative penalty of $25,000 within three months of signing the consent order. He must also pay $5,000 in “investigation costs” to the BCFSA, also within three months.
