Their paths bring to life the dedication and innovation driving Canada’s mortgage industry forward.
Each inductee has made a unique impact, from pioneering new approaches in mortgage financing to advocating for brokers nationwide. As you read their stories, you’ll gain insight into the personal journeys and professional milestones that define these leaders—and inspire the next generation.
Meet your 2025 Hall of Fame inductees:
Gord Wintrup
The quiet trailblazer: Gord Wintrup’s five decades of shaping Canada’s mortgage industry
As someone who has always resisted the limelight, Gord Wintrup feels a little uncomfortable with his induction into the Mortgage Hall of Fame.
“I wasn’t even going to come [to the induction ceremony],” he says. “Then I had a few people who are in the Hall of Fame phone me and say, ‘Wintrup, get your butt over there,’ and I realized they’ve all been pushing for me to be there, and I can’t let them down.”
While those who have had the greatest impact on the industry often do so in front of an audience, Wintrup has been quietly making his mark from behind the scenes for over 50 years.
Wintrup began his career as a credit manager for the Bank of Montreal in Vancouver in 1964, and soon after moved to Laurentide Finance. There, he says he fell in love with the lending division and became a registered mortgage broker in 1971, before moving to Burrard Mortgage Investments.
At the time, Wintrup says there were no cell phones and lots of competition in the major cities. That’s what inspired him to look a little further afield.
“I went around finding people in smaller locales who were struggling to make ends meet and asked if I could put a phone in their house for free; all they had to do was be home the day the newspaper came out,” he says. “Then I’d put ads in the local paper with a local phone number, and I started getting leads in all these towns, and the competition could never figure out why nobody was calling their 1-800 numbers.”
Wintrup adds that he became such a fixture in some of these smaller towns around Langley, British Columbia that at least one politician asked if he’d consider running for a council position, mistaking him for a local.
In 1982, Wintrup and a couple of Burrard colleagues co-founded Bayfield Mortgage Professionals in Langley, B.C., at a time when the industry was still unregulated and fighting for legitimacy. “It was a business, but it wasn’t the profession that it is today,” he says. “We were lenders of last resort.”
What started out as three brokers and a few helpers making collect calls to Wintrup at Bayfield from the surrounding areas has since grown to include 82 brokers serving B.C., Alberta and Manitoba.
While building his own businesses, Wintrup simultaneously championed efforts to further the industry more broadly in the province. In 1973, he became one of the founding members of the Mortgage Dealers Association of British Columbia, a predecessor to the Mortgage Brokers Association of B.C., and long before the Mortgage Brokers Act. With limited oversight at the time, Wintrup says a few bad apples were threatening the industry’s reputation.
“So, we formed an ethics committee. I was elected chair of that committee, working with government to clean up the industry,” he says. “Some of the shady people that were in the business at that time, I had threats on my life from them.”
Wintrup says he even worked with the RCMP, offering expert testimony to help the authorities better identify bad actors.
“I sat on that board for 13 years, I had a new idea every year, until one day I couldn’t come up with any original ideas, and that’s when I resigned, found my replacement and moved on,” he says.
Just a couple of years after co-founding Bayfield in 1984, Wintrup had another bold idea.
“A lot of my [private mortgage] investors would head south for the winter to go golfing, and I was ruining their golf game every time someone bounced a cheque, and they didn’t want the hassle, they just wanted to park their money with someone they trusted,” he says.
That’s what inspired Wintrup to found one of the first (he believes second or third) Mortgage Investment Corporations (MICs) in the province of British Columbia.
“We started with pledges in ‘84 of under $90,000, and it’s over $140 million today,” he says. “I guess if you’re around long enough, you become an overnight success.”
Though he is still a little hesitant to put himself in the spotlight, Wintrup says he’s grateful for the support shown by his fellow industry members who pushed for his induction into the Mortgage Hall of Fame.
“Looking back on my career starting at the bank in ’64 to now, it’s been a long journey, it’s been a rewarding journey, it’s been a challenging journey, but boy, look where we are today,” he says. “We’re part of a profession, we have clients referring their family members to us, I have investors bringing their children and now grandchildren to invest in the MIC, so yeah, we’ve come a long way — not just me, the whole profession.”
Frank Napolitano
A lifetime of lending, learning and leading: Frank Napolitano’s impact on Canada’s mortgage industry
It’s always a special day when a Canadian mortgage professional finds out they’ve been inducted into the Hall of Fame, but Frank Napolitano’s experience is in a league of its own.
That day, Napolitano, his wife, seven other brokers and a group from MCAN were on a Mediterranean cruise as part of a contest they put together a year and a half prior. After docking in the coastal Moroccan city of Tangier, they spent the day touring the city followed by a camel ride along the Pacific Ocean.
“And then we get back to the ship, and I put my phone on and it’s a message from Lauren [van den berg, President and CEO of Mortgage Professionals Canada] congratulating me on being inducted into the Mortgage Hall of Fame,” Napolitano says. “I never would have had that on my bingo card — finding out I was inducted into the Mortgage Hall of Fame while I’m in Africa for the first time in my life.”
Though the timing of the announcement came as a surprise, Napolitano’s induction shouldn’t, as the agent and managing partner of Mortgage Brokers Ottawa has long been the face — and voice — of the industry in Canada’s capital.
Napolitano began his career as a bank teller for Canada Trust, and after years of climbing the corporate ladder, was offered a coveted branch manager position at the age of 32.
“In order to become a branch manager, you have to learn the lending side of the business,” he says. “I enjoyed it so much more that when I got the opportunity to have my own branch I opted-out, which surprised everyone at the time.”
Instead, Napolitano spent the next eight years as a mobile mortgage representative with Canada Trust, earning the Paragon of Sales Award—presented to the country’s top 10 salespeople by volume—in seven of those years.
After merging with TD, Napolitano left the bank and joined forces with longtime friend and Canada Trust colleague Michael Hapke. Together they founded Mortgage Brokers Ottawa in 2005.
“Our intention was to have 10 of us just start this company and do our best,” he says. “After we started it, people we had worked with started reaching out, and the next thing you know we’re at 40 people within 5 years and 60 people within eight.”
A couple of years into the new venture, Napolitano, frustrated by the misconceptions and lack of awareness regarding mortgage brokers and looking for a way to market the brokerage, pitched a local radio station on a show dedicated to real estate.
“Our first contract was for six months just to try it, and if I listen to the first few shows now it’s like ‘oh my god, was that bad,’ because we just didn’t know any better,” Napolitano says. “We weren’t getting any phone calls, but then in the fifth and sixth months the phone started ringing off the hook, and now 18 and a half years later we’re still doing the show every Saturday morning.”
580 CFRA’s “Open House – The Real Estate and Mortgage Show” recently surpassed its 900th episode and can still be heard on the air weekly.
“Because of that, CTV approached me and asked if I’d consider coming in every second Tuesday morning,” he says. “For the last 16 years, I’ve been going into the studio, trying to educate viewers on different topics like what to look for if you’re getting a mortgage renewal, or different types of mortgages.”
Napolitano continues to dedicate his time to being that voice for the industry in Ottawa because of the positive impact he’s seen brokers have on members of his community, including his own family.
“My dad was a hardworking chef, and when he brought his second house with my mom, they needed a $15,000 mortgage,” he says. “I remember them going to the bank where they did all their banking, and they gave them a hard time. Then they went to a local mortgage broker, and by the time they got home from his office, the phone rings and it’s the broker telling him he was approved by his bank after they turned him down at the branch.”
Napolitano adds that for customers of a certain age, brokers still represent a lender of last resort, but he’s encouraged to see a new generation going to brokers first.
Though he won’t take credit for it, it’s safe to assume that many feel differently about the industry than previous generations thanks to the tireless efforts of Napolitano, and others like him, who volunteer their time to educate the public.
“This award might have my name on it, but it’s really for everyone in my family — my personal family who have supported me, but also my MBO family, who have helped this company grow,” he says.
Just because he’s in the Hall of Fame, however, doesn’t mean the self-described workaholic is planning to slow down any time soon.
“People keep asking me when I’m going to retire,” Napolitano says. “People retire from jobs they don’t enjoy, but if you love what you do, you’re not working, you’re just keeping busy.”
Joe Pinheiro
Guiding others to greatness: Joe Pinheiro’s legacy of leadership and mentorship
Nothing makes Joe Pinheiro happier than helping others.
Through 22 years building Mortgage Alliance and the last four as senior vice president of network development for DLCG — and being the only person to serve as MPC Board Chair twice — Pinheiro says he’s driven by the opportunity to share his knowledge and experience.
“They say if you want to know a subject, spend 10 years teaching it,” he says. “Well, I spent 22 years teaching it, but I just love the subject, and love helping people with their careers.”
Over the years, Pinheiro has served as a formal instructor in traditional academic settings — instructing more than 15,000 agents at Seneca, Conestoga and Fanshaw colleges in Ontario — as well as in more informal ones, like as a board member and chair of MPC, or as a mentor to his colleagues.
“Even in the role I’m in now, that hasn’t changed,” he says. “Now, I help a lot of the sales team become better salespeople and recruit more, and that kind of mentoring is what keeps me going.”
Pinheiro, who began his career as a mortgage broker in Cambridge, Ontario in 1990, says it was an entrepreneurial spirit and an interest in real estate that initially attracted him to the industry, but a love for helping others that has kept him in it ever since.
“Knowing that you’re making a difference in other people’s lives, it’s really rewarding, and it’s something that you just don’t really get in a whole bunch of other fields,” he says. “There aren’t too many jobs out there where people say, ‘Hey, man, thanks a lot. You made a difference in my life.’”
Pinheiro was a founding member of Mortgage Alliance in 1998, where he aided its expansion into the Ontario Southwest region, becoming Vice President of Sales in 2004 and CEO in 2018.
“I love being a part of a lot of people’s first day on the job,” he adds. “It’s gratifying to see people I’ve mentored become successful.”
In 2020, Pinheiro joined Dominion Lending Centres where he continues to oversee a team of eight Vice Presidents across the DLCG group.
As someone who has long been looked to for leadership, mentorship and guidance in the industry, it’s no surprise that Pinheiro found a natural place on the MPC board, where he has the distinction of being both its longest serving member and its only two-time chair.
Pinheiro has been a member of the board for 13 years, including seven at the executive level, where he chaired key committees and played a critical role in shaping the Mortgage Brokers and Lenders Act of 2006.
“I don’t think too many people are going to beat that record,” he says of his impressive tenure on the board.
Pinheiro says the first time he was elected board chair roughly 12 years ago, he felt it was his responsibility to play a more direct role in shaping the industry.
“When you get older, it’s no longer about what you want, it’s about getting the best out of everybody, so I think the second time I added a different perspective,” he says. The role, he adds, felt like a more natural fit for the passionate teacher and mentor once he adopted that outlook. “The second time I was a little bit older than the other board members, they were all first-timers, and I did a lot more listening, a lot more engaging, and getting the best out of those people.”
Though his induction into the Hall of Fame didn’t exactly come as a surprise, given that most past board chairs get the nod after serving only a single term, the announcement was still met with emotion.
“I was happy, humble, a little teary eyed, a little choked up,” he says. “To be part of an elite group of people and be associated with those types of individuals was humbling.”
Pinheiro says he’s seen the industry evolve significantly since he joined it nearly 30 years ago — especially when it comes to technology-enabled, do-it-yourself options — but believes the one thing that will never change is the value of that personal connection he’s spent his career mastering, and teaching others.
That is why he encourages his fellow brokers to remain focused on being that trusted source of expertise, not only to clients, but colleagues and other industry members as well.
“If you’re passionate about putting in the effort to assist others, I think people are going to like you, they’re going to respect you, and you’re going to make an impact,” he says. “In order to make the industry better, I think you almost have an obligation to transfer that knowledge to other people, otherwise you’re not really doing it justice.”
Photo credits: Amy Godin Photography
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Last modified: October 21, 2025
