RIGHT AT HOME REALTY – TAKING FINTRAC COMPLIANCE TO THE NEXT LEVEL
A CASE STUDY ON HOW THE ILUMINAI PLATFORM ENHANCED BUSINESS OUTCOMES FOR ONE OF CANADA'S LARGEST INDEPENDENT REAL ESTATE BROKERAGES
Introduction
FINTRAC
In Canada’s evolving regulatory landscape, compliance is an essential but increasingly complex part of doing business. At the forefront of this effort is the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), the agency responsible for enforcing anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CTF) regulations. For real estate brokerages, FINTRAC’s requirements represent both a challenge and an opportunity to modernize operations while safeguarding against financial crime.
Since 2021, brokerages have faced heightened obligations that aim to ensure transparency in an industry that has historically been vulnerable to money laundering and other illicit activities. However, for brokerages relying on outdated and manual systems, meeting these requirements is overwhelming and burdensome. While FINTRAC’s obligations are vital to prevent illegal activities like money laundering, they introduce operational complexities that can overwhelm traditional, paper-based real estate operations.
Compliance is rarely as straightforward as it seems. The majority of brokerages, especially smaller ones, lack the infrastructure or expertise to meet FINTRAC’s requirements efficiently. From conducting politically exposed persons (PEP) checks to analyzing adverse media and record-keeping that date back 5-years, the process requires time, expertise, and digital infrastructure that many brokerages don’t have. Penalties for failure can be severe, with fines that can cripple brokerages.
“Failure to fulfill FINTRAC compliance obligations can represent one of the single largest organisation expenses, with fines ranging from $50,000 to half a million dollars.”
Friedrich Klaus - Co-Founder, Iluminai
This case study explores how innovative solutions can simplify compliance, turning it from a cost center into a competitive advantage by establishing protection against fines, enhancing efficiencies through data and automation, and optimizing growth through digitisation. Through a deep-dive into Right at Home Realty, one of Canada’s largest independent real estate brokerages, we examine how forward thinking brokerages can use compliance as a springboard for efficiency, operational improvement, and growth in today’s increasingly digital environment.
Right at Home Realty
Right at Home Realty is one of Canada’s largest and most established real estate brokerages, with over 6,000 agents operating across multiple locations. Despite its size and success, the brokerage faced challenges with FINTRAC compliance - due to manual processes, outdated systems, evolving FINTRAC requirements, and limited industry-specific tools to address their needs.
After a notice of non-compliance and a fine from FINTRAC, Right at Home Realty’s leadership team recognised that to remain compliant, competitive, and efficient, a change was needed.
The brokerage quickly decided that a digital platform was needed, tailored to the unique challenges of real estate compliance and operations.
This digital platform needed to fulfill five aims:
"FINTRAC will put companies out of business. They'll fine them to the extent that they might as well close their doors rather than try to either fight it or even pay it.""With Iluminai, we turned a labor-intensive, error-prone process into a strategic advantage."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
- Automated Compliance: a solution to simplify and automate FINTRAC obligations, and bring the organisation back into compliance.
- Scalability & Adaptability: a platform capable of supporting Right at Home Realty’s large agent base and evolving alongside the brokerage’s growth.
- User-Friendly Technology: a simple and accessible tool with an interface that encouraged agent adoption and limited resistance to change.
- Automation & Integration: a technology to streamline workflows, eliminate redundancies in agent workflows, reduce errors, and connect to the brokerage’s existing platform without disrupting daily operations.
- Future-Proofing: a system that not only addressed current compliance needs but also evolved as compliance requirements changed, and leveraged data for strategic insights, allowing the brokerage to explore opportunities for growth and innovation.
With Iluminai, Right at Home Realty sought a comprehensive solution that would resolve inefficiencies, ensure compliance, and position the brokerage as a leader in a rapidly digitizing industry.
Remediate: Immediate Protection Against Fines
Remediation: “to correct something that is wrong or damaged or to improve a bad situation.”
For Canadian real estate brokerages, failure to fulfill FINTRAC compliance obligations can represent one of the single largest organisation risks, with fines ranging from $50,000 to half a million dollars.
"FINTRAC will put companies out of business. They'll fine them to the extent that they might as well close their doors rather than try to either fight it or even pay it."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
Despite this, FINTRAC non-compliance is staggeringly common. A study conducted by Iluminai in 2022 estimated that %99.75 of real estate brokerages were partially or wholly non-compliant with the 2021 update to the PCMTLFA’s new obligations.
The Problems
Real estate brokerages are often unaware of the extent of their obligations.
Awareness of FINTRAC obligations - and the specific components that exist within each obligation - is not high. In most cases, real estate brokerages are surprised by the extent of their responsibilities.
“Like the vast majority of real estate brokerages across the country, Right at Home Realty was of the belief that we were doing things in accordance with all FINTRAC’s requirements. It’s not until someone comes in who really knows what’s going on with FINTRAC for most brokerages to realise they’re not doing enough.”
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
In our experience, these five categories are the least known, least understood, and the most difficult to uphold.
- Good Record Keeping: to maintain comprehensive and accurate records relative to transactions, client identification information, compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist (CTF), and historical risk assessments.
- Agent Business Relationship Monitoring: agents to regularly make inquiries with their customers, check the web for news that might indicate a suspicious change in circumstances and record when they looked, what they found, where they looked and what they did when in possession of new information.
- Brokerage Ongoing Monitoring: brokerages to continuously evaluate and monitor all client relationships to detect, assess, and report suspicious activity (incl. relevant due diligence and risk mitigation measures) including PEP, Sanctions and Adverse Media Monitoring.
- Following Directives: to adhere to FINTRAC-issued instructions or requirements, including but not limited to reporting thresholds, filing deadlines, and report organisation methods.
- Training: to establish, implement, and maintain regular AML, CTF, and/or other FINTRAC-specific training programs for employees and agents to ensure compliance obligations awareness and capability.
- Policies & Procedures: to develop, document, maintain, and enforce tailored internal compliance policies and procedures to address regulatory requirements and brokerage- specific risks.
Even when aware of their obligations, in most cases the tools used by real estate brokerages for compliance are inadequate.
Even when brokerages are aware of their obligations, fulfilling them represents a significant hurdle.
Either: existing compliance providers, tools, and technologies are not designed with the specific realities of the real estate industry in mind, and do not easily integrate with existing systems.
“We knew fully that there was not an off-the-shelf solution in the marketplace at that time... Any other company that we engaged with, wewere going to have to really work with them as much as they were willing to work with us to develop the required solution, as per Canadian FINTRAC compliance obligations.”
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
Or: the few real estate focused solutions that exist tend to be non-comprehensive.
“FINTRACKER was dipping a toe into providing ongoing monitoring but had a lot of problems with it... At the time of our discussions, it wasn’t something that met our needs."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
As a result of either case, brokerages end up blindsided by non-compliance rulings despite their best efforts.
In Iluminai’s experience, brokerages have had to cobble together homemade solutions which include an Excel Spreadsheet, expensive Project Management software, good-ol’ fashioned human effort, and expensive external consultants.
During a study conducted by Iluminai in 2022, one brokerage was identified which had successfully created a fully compliant homebrew solution - it cost the brokerage over $80,000 per year in total, a hefty ask for a husband and wife team managing 100 agents.
The Result
These problems result in real estate brokerages either spending on incomplete solutions, investing in custom solutions that do not address their root obligations, or incorrectly assuming that they are fulfilling their obligations until they are fined.
What’s worse is that, even when informed of non-compliance, most brokerages do not know where to turn.
Right at Home Realty’s Partner Selection Process
During Right at Home Realty’s partner selection process, the brokerage identified five core issues that needed to be addressed by their chosen partner.
1. FINTRAC & Real Estate Knowledge
Right at Home Realty explored industry-agnostic compliance tools but found that tailoring these solutions to meet FINTRAC and Canadian real estate requirements required significant effort. In one case, they invested considerable time and resources working with a provider only to discover that the provider misunderstood key aspects of Canadian regulations and real estate operations. Other potential partners lacked the ability to manage business relationships across thousands of agents, regularly assess customer risk, or address unique regulatory nuances like FINTRAC’s five-year monitoring rule.
2. Brokerage Focus
Tools that were specifically focused on FINTRAC fell short because they focused on individual agent compliance without providing brokerages with a centralized system for monitoring compliance across their network, or easy access to the data generated. For example, agents could use these tools to generate PDFs for identification requirements, but Right at Home Realty still had to manually extract and manage this data for FINTRAC’s ongoing monitoring requirements.
3. Integration Capabilities
Many tools operated in silos or required extensive manual effort to transfer data to existing brokerage platforms, which was both inefficient and prone to errors. Right at Home Realty needed a solution that could integrate seamlessly with their proprietary "Our Home" platform.
4. Adaptation To Changing Regulations
FINTRAC regularly updates compliance requirements, and Right at Home Realty needed a partner who could adapt quickly to ensure ongoing compliance.Existing providers demonstrated limitations in scaling or evolving their technology to meet these changing demands.
5. Automated Processes
Without a reliable automated solution, Right at Home Realty faced the prospect of hiring additional staff to manage compliance manually—a costly and error-prone alternative. This further emphasised the need for a tech-forward partner who could alleviate this burden.
The Solution
“Iluminai understood FINTRAC, they understood Canadian real estate and, I have to say, they were 100% willing to work with us to make sure that the end-product met FINTRAC’s requirements as well as our needs as a business.”
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
Iluminai is a sector-centric platform tailored to address FINTRAC compliance for Canadian real estate brokerages.
Iluminai’s first step with a new client is to remediate their data: by fixing pre-existing issues relative to record keeping, policies and procedures, and ongoing monitoring, Iluminai brings the organisation back into compliance. This provides immediate protection against future fines and, in some cases, allows for re-negotiation of existing fines.
This remediation process, through the Iluminai platform, entails:
- Addressing Data Deficiencies: identifying and resolving gaps in client and transaction data to ensure all required compliance information is complete and accurate.
- Meeting 5-Year Backwards Obligations: collecting and integrating historical client and transaction records from the past five years to comply with FINTRAC’s ongoing monitoring requirements.
- Automating Ongoing Monitoring: implementing technology to continuously screen client data against sanctions lists and other compliance checks in real-time without manual intervention.
- Updating Policies & Procedures: revising internal guidelines to align with current FINTRAC regulations, ensuring staff and agents follow standardised compliance practices.
- Creating Comprehensive & Detailed Record-Keeping: establishing centralised systems to maintain thorough, accessible, and auditable records of all compliance activities and client interactions.
“What Iluminai offers now should absolutely meet the needs of any residential real estate organisation in this country… We know that the product that Iluminai offers now meets the standards of FINTRAC and probably exceeds them. And so any other organisation who may be interested in this product should understand that they would be in a high state of compliance were they to use it.”
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
As a result of the Iluminai platform, real estate brokerages are certain to gain immediate protection against fines that could reach as high as half a million dollars, and feel secure that they are compliant with all FINTRAC requirements.
De-Risk: Efficiencies Through Data & Automation
De-Risking: “the process of minimising or eliminating potential risks and uncertainties.”
According to the latest data, over 60% of real estate companies estimate that their digital adoption and automation accounts for less than 7% of their processes. In short, real estate is still primarily an analog business.
This, by default, increases the likelihood of FINTRAC non-compliance. However, it also means lost efficiencies to minimise costs and maximise returns.
By fulfilling FINTRAC obligations, real estate brokerages also gain significant efficiencies through data and automation.
"Iluminai was the solution that managed to strike both of our needs pretty evenly—making things easy for our agents and streamlining our operations."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
The Problems
Analog processes fail to adhere to FINTRAC obligations
FINTRAC’s obligations - specifically, their requirements relative to brokerage ongoing monitoring, agent business relationship monitoring, recordkeeping, and report generation - cannot be fulfilled in an analog system. This means that, by nature, brokerages operating using analog processes are highly unlikely to be compliant.
Analog processes provide limited insights on agents and customer success
Most brokerages have limited access to agent and customer data. It is almost impossible to easily measure how many new listings an agent is generating or how many new customers an agent is creating. As such, data-driven decision-making is difficult to achieve - if brokerages do not know who/what is working, they cannot adapt through new tools and processes.
"This was one of the key things that was important to us when we became aware of Iluminai... This was actual tech that had the capacity to take in data and put it into an ongoing monitoring system."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
Analog processes diminish organisational productivity, efficiency, and performance
Productivity, efficiency, and performance are important in all businesses. For real estate, the opportunity to maximise value through dataand automation are huge. However, at the moment, this does not exist - most brokerages run on paper or redundant digital services that neither integrate with one another nor provide a comprehensive solution.
"Most brokerages using FINTRACKER are only getting PDFs that agents submit manually, and then the brokerage is stuck gleaning information from the PDFs and inputting it into a system—this is inefficient and prone to error."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
Right at Home Realty: Efficiency & Automation
During Right at Home Realty’s partner selection process, the brokerage identified five core issues that needed to be addressed by their chosen partner.
“Anything that we can do that eliminates paperwork for agents, that eliminates a step that could be missed, is a win for us."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
Prior to Iluminai’s involvement, Right at Home Realty recognized that there was an opportunity for enhanced business outcomes through efficiencies and/or automation.
Together, Iluminai and Right at Home Realty identified the following challenges:
1. Lack of Centralised Monitoring
The absence of a centralised system for ongoing monitoring meant that Right at Home Realty struggled to track compliance data efficiently. Without automation, monitoring business relationships for the required five-year period involved manual checks and piecemeal systems, leading to inefficiencies and increased risks. The only alternative - other than Iluminai - was to hire additional staff.
2. Manual Data Entry & Management
The use of tools by agents that generated compliance forms in PDF format - which then had to be manually reviewed, extracted, and entered into spreadsheets by brokerage staff - was time-consuming, error-prone, and resource-intensive. This is especially problematic, given the volume of transactions handled by Right at Home Realty’s 6,000 agents. It was estimated that tens of thousands of dollars (at least) would be lost since additional staff would need to be hired, significantly increasing operational costs without addressing the root inefficiencies.
“When you have a brokerage of our size, manual data entry involves multiple humans. You put the data into a spreadsheet, then the spreadsheet needs to be downloaded into some kind of monitoring system... It’s cumbersome.”
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
3. Integration Challenges
Existing tools could not integrate seamlessly with Right at Home Realty’s proprietary "rHome" platform. This disconnect required agents and staff to manage compliance processes outside of their primary workflow, creating duplication of effort and slowing down transaction processing. It was estimated that over 6,000 hours of time would be saved by resolving this issue.
4. Inconsistent Compliance Practices
With agents operating as independent contractors, ensuring consistency in compliance processes was challenging. The lack of a unified system resulted in the risk of variability in how compliance tasks were completed, further complicating oversight and increasing the potential for errors - this required extensive monitoring to combat.
The Result
These problems result in real estate brokerages failing to adhere to FINTRAC obligations while simultaneously losing out on insights and efficiencies that would enhance organisational performance.
In many cases, brokerages are unaware that there are redundancies or inherently solvable inefficiencies, or where those redundancies/inefficiencies are until their compliance process with Iluminai begins.
"We knew that we needed a tool that was going to facilitate our agents' compliance... we had to find a solution that was going to give our agents an easier way of meeting these compliance standards, that was also going to ultimately be proof and protection for Right at Home Realty. Iluminai provided that tool."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
The Solution
Iluminai is a sector-centric platform tailored to address FINTRAC compliance for Canadian real estate brokerages. By doing so, Iluminai unlocks efficiencies through automation, and greater access to data.
This process leads to:
Right at Home Realty’s New Efficiencies
Automation of Compliance Processes
Iluminai’s platform automated critical tasks, such as client identification and ongoing monitoring, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing human error. This allowed Right at Home Realty to focus resources on higher-value activities rather than tedious administrative work.
Streamlined Data Integration
By integrating Iluminai with their proprietary "Our Home" platform, Right at Home Realty enabled seamless data flow between systems. This integration removed the need for agents to manually upload PDFs or duplicate information, significantly accelerating transaction processing times.
Improved Monitoring & Risk Management
Iluminai provided centralised, real-time monitoring of all client relationships, cycling data through sanctions lists and regulatory checks. This comprehensive approach ensured Right at Home Realty could quickly identify and address any risks, meeting FINTRAC’s stringent five-year monitoring requirements with ease.
Cost Savings Through Reduced Manual Labor
With automated systems handling compliance tasks, Right at Home Realty avoided the need to hire additional staff to manage compliance manually. This not only reduced costs but also minimised the potential for delays and bottlenecks.
Enhanced Agent Usability
Iluminai’s user-friendly interface allowed agents to easily fulfill compliance obligations without extensive training or effort - through all their devices. This simplicity encouraged adoption and reduced resistance, further streamlining compliance processes.
New Stakeholder Insights
Iluminai’s platform makes it possible for Right at Home Realty to assess agent transaction trends, customer trends, operational trends, and more. This enhances data-driven decision-making and brokerage-level analysis.
Preparation for Future Opportunities
With a robust compliance system in place, Right at Home Realty can now explore the development of advanced data analysis. Right at Home Realty can identify even more insights, manage risks more broadly, and deepen client relationships through a more comprehensive understanding of their needs and behaviours. These future capabilities position the brokerage for long-term success and competitive advantage.
Optimize: Growth Through Digitisation
De-Risking: “the process of minimising or eliminating potential risks and uncertainties.”
For decades, the real estate industry has thrived despite limited reliance on digital tools. However, as technology continues to advance, brokerages can no longer afford to depend on antiquated processes that hinder growth and agility. Digitisation represents a seismic shift—not just in compliance but in creating opportunities for scalability, innovation, and customer-centricity.
"Anything that we can do that eliminates paperwork for agents, that eliminates a step that could be missed, is a win for us."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
Digitally-enabled brokerages leverage structured data, automation, and digital tools to gain competitive advantages, ranging from predictive analytics to enhanced client relationships. These capabilities provide more than operational efficiency—they create the foundation for future-proofing businesses in an increasingly data-driven world.
The Problems
Without digitised systems, real estate brokerages struggle to scale effectively.
Reliance on outdated processes like manual data entry, physical paperwork, and disconnected systems slows operations, increases errors, and prevents brokerages from achieving sustainable growth.
"If you want to use methods other than the Iluminai platform, fees will be significantly higher. If you want to use paper or a system that doesn't provide you with the data that enables ongoing monitoring, people have to get involved. And the more people we have doing those kinds of tasks, the higher our costs are as a brokerage and the more opportunity for error there is."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
Without digitised systems, real estate brokerages struggle to scale effectively.
Brokerages perceive digitisation as expensive and time-consuming, with added challenges in convincing agents to adapt to new systems, creating a significant barrier to progress.
"There are individuals who, no matter what you do, are going to continue doing things on paper because they just abhor technology and they'll have nothing to do with it. If we can limit our non-adopters to that kind of group and get everybody else on it, for me that's the big KPI."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
In cases where real estate brokerages decide to digitise, the tools and technologies available to support them are limited.
Many existing solutions lack real estate-specific functionality, fail to integrate seamlessly with brokerage workflows, or do not offer sufficient value to justify the investment.
"Other technologies we looked at did not have a specific real estate focus, and we would've had to work extensively with providers to adapt their platforms."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
The Result
Without effective digitisation, real estate brokerages face significant operational and compliance challenges. Scaling becomes increasingly difficult as inefficiencies pile up, costs rise, and agents struggle to adapt.
Brokerages that resist digitisation often find themselves falling behind competitors who embrace modern tools, while those that do digitize are limited by subpar solutions that fail to address their unique needs. This leaves many brokerages stuck in a cycle of inefficiency, non-compliance, and lost opportunities for growth.
Right at Home Realty & Digitisation
Right at Home Realty recognized early in their relationship with Iluminai that digitisation represented an opportunity that extended into almost all facets of the business.
Streamlined Compliance: automated tracking and monitoring of key compliance obligations, such as business relationship monitoring and recordkeeping, which reduced reliance on manual data entry, minimised errors and ensured regulatory requirements could be consistently met.
Improved Operational Efficiency: significant time savings, with over 6,000 hours saved by eliminating manual processes, and enhancing integration with existing workflows to enable seamless transitions between tasks, reducing bottlenecks.
Scalability: a platform designed to grow with the brokerage, supporting its 6,000+ agents and multiple locations, with tools that adapt to evolving compliance and operational demands, future-proofing the business.
Enhanced Agent Productivity: an easy-to-use tool, encouraging adoption across the organisation, and freeing agents from administrative burdens - allowing them to focus on building client relationships and closing deals.
Competitive Advantage: access to real-time and structured data, enabling strategic decision-making and improved customer experiences, while positioning Right at Home Realty as a forward-thinking brokerage, distinguishing it from competitors reliant on outdated processes.
The Result
Iluminai is a sector-centric platform tailored to address FINTRAC compliance for Canadian real estate brokerages. By doing so, Iluminai unlocks digitisation for real estate brokerages, thereby enhancing business outcomes.
A Streamlined Operation: seamless data flow between compliance, CRM, and transaction management systems eliminates manual redundancies and saves time, while the familiar and intuitive interface ensures minimal training time for agents, accelerating adoption across the organisation.
A Future-Ready System: the digital data captured by Iluminai unlocks opportunities for advanced analytics, business intelligence, and CRM enhancements - brokerages can leverage these tools to improve agent performance, forecast trends, and connect to even more tools and technologies that enhance business outcomes.
An Evolving Ecosystem: Iluminai adapts the platform based on changes to FINTRAC policy and/or opportunities for further improvement, ensuring a tool that is always relevant to the realities of the real estate landscape.
Concluding Remarks: Looking Forward
“When you launch a new tech and you don’t get any kind of pushback from the agents, that's pretty remarkable. And we didn't get any pushback with the soft launch, so we rolled it out to the entire organisation.”
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
As the real estate industry navigates an increasingly complex compliance landscape, the need for digital solutions that streamline operations has never been more apparent. Right at Home Realty’s journey highlights how a proactive approach to FINTRAC compliance can ensure protection from fines that can shut brokerages down while simultaneously unlocking efficiencies, driving operational improvements, and laying the foundation for scalable growth.
Through its partnership with Iluminai, Right at Home Realty not only regained compliance but transformed its brokerage operations, saving thousands of hours, reducing costs, enhancing both agent and customer experiences, and creating a foundation for even more improvements through the ability to integrate new tools and technologies. The case study underscores a critical insight: FINTRAC compliance, when approached strategically, is not just a regulatory requirement but a business transformation.
As the industry continues to evolve, brokerages that embrace digitisation, automation, and data-driven decision-making will be best positioned to thrive. With Iluminai, real estate brokerages have a partner that not only ensures regulatory adherence but empowers them to operate smarter, more efficiently, and with a future-proofed vision for success.
“As a smart business person, I would want to be associated with an organisation that is helping me stay compliant and that's giving me tools that make it easy for me to do that—that's really the whole thing."
Debra Harris - SVP Strategic Growth, Right at Home Realty
About Iluminai
Iluminai Intelligence Corporation is an exciting new startup in the Real Estate space, servicing residential, commercial, and mortgage brokers. Iluminai streamlines customer onboarding, automates compliance and saves firms on average $50,000 per year in hidden administrative expenses. Founded in Vancouver in 2021, Iluminai has quickly become the tool of choice for larger and more sophisticated brokerages who want to cut costs and exceed their compliance obligations.