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Lying to borrowers, lying to banks, falsifying official documents, and exploiting conflicts of interest: Enforcement actions taken in the past year by the province’s financial services regulator provide a look at a handful of B.C. mortgage brokers behaving badly.

While only a few cases result in formal disciplinary actions, new figures show the number of complaints about B.C. mortgage brokers has increased dramatically over the past two years.

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The number of complaints this year is running about 85 per cent higher than the total from two years ago, according to information from B.C.’s Financial Institutions Commission, or Ficom, the body regulating the province’s 3,400 registered mortgage brokers, who arrange mortgages and facilitate interactions between borrowers and lenders.

The regulator received 109 complaints about mortgage brokers in 2013, and the same number in 2014. For 2015, they received 136 complaints, a year-over-year increase of about 25 per cent.