BrokerPlus's rate feed covers the lenders it pulls automatically, but a private lender, a credit union, or a niche shop you place with occasionally won't be on it. Add Custom Lender is how you put one on the grid anyway, priced entirely from what you type in.
Adding One or Several at Once
On the Rates page (Tools > Rates), the Add Custom Lender button opens a form built for more than one lender at a time. Name the first one, then use Add another lender to stack on as many as you need before submitting - useful right after a broker event where you picked up terms from three or four shops in one afternoon. Every draft you've filled in goes to the grid together in a single save.
Filling Only the Terms You Have
Each draft shows the same term columns as the live grid: the five fixed terms, Variable, and Rental. You almost never have a quote for all of them, and you don't need one - leave any term blank and it's simply skipped, so the lender lands on the grid showing a rate only where you actually typed one. A draft needs a name and at least one filled term to be added at all. The Variable column takes a signed offset against prime, same P plus-or-minus toggle as the live grid, not an absolute rate.
Filing It Under a Lender Type
Each draft carries a Type selector - A-Lender, Alt / B-Lender, Private / MIC, or Reverse Mortgage - so the new row files consistently with everything else on your list. Leave it uncategorized if you're not sure yet; you can open the lender's details afterward and set or change its type any time.
Renaming or Removing It
A custom lender's name and type aren't locked in at creation. Open its details from the grid to rename it or reclassify it later - useful once you've learned a bit more about how the lender actually operates. To remove one entirely, use the delete icon on its row rather than looking for an archive control; a custom lender doesn't get archived, it gets deleted outright, since there's no catalogue entry underneath it to return to.
What a Custom Lender Cannot Do
A custom lender never receives a daily rate update, because there's no market feed behind it - whatever you type is the only rate it will ever show until you edit it yourself. That also means Reset to Live Rates leaves it completely alone: the reset only clears overrides on lenders BrokerPlus actually feeds, and wiping a custom lender's typed rate with nothing to fall back to would just erase your work, so the product deliberately skips it. A custom lender also can't be archived the way a catalogue lender can - delete is the only way to take it off the grid.
What to Do Next
- Add a rate override to price an individual term differently on a lender already on the feed
- See how lender-specific penalty rules apply once a custom lender is in the mix
- Choose the lenders you place with to keep your list to the ones you actually use