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About CLS Money
CLS Money is a mortgage broker based in Essex, UK. Founded in 2011, they specialise in straight-talking mortgage advice for customers in complex or non-standard situations — first-time buyers, self-employed applicants, bad credit histories, and everything in between. Their team of specialist advisors manages every case from initial enquiry through to completion, handling the paperwork, liaising with lenders and solicitors, and making sure customers get the right mortgage for their situation.
As a business built entirely on broker performance, getting the incentive structure right isn’t just an HR question — it’s the commercial engine of everything they do.
Industry: Mortgage Brokerage
Company Size: 11–50 employees
Location: United Kingdom
Main Improvement Areas:
- Implementing bonus and enhanced commission structures
- Shifting from target-based to bonus-based performance management
- Giving sales reps real-time visibility of their earnings
- Eliminating manual commission tracking
- Driving above-target performance without management pressure
The Challenge
CLS Money had the ideas. They just didn’t have the infrastructure to make them work.
The leadership team knew that bonuses and enhanced commissions were the lever they needed to push their brokers further. The problem was tracking and implementing them.
Their CRM’s native options didn’t have the right features. A Google Sheet was the obvious fallback — but as Harley Kimber, Technical Officer at CLS Money, puts it, it was “just so basic, and there was gonna be so much manual work and prone to errors.” Their external reporting systems had the same issue: the moment they tried to add any real complexity, the model broke down quickly.
The result was a dead end. They had the ambition to build a proper incentive programme but nowhere to build it — which is what led them to Remuner.
Before Using Remuner
The absence of a proper incentive system wasn’t just an admin problem. It was quietly shaping broker behaviour in a way that cost CLS Money deals every single month.
When there’s no bonus to chase, hitting your target is both the floor and the ceiling. Brokers knew their number — fifteen deals, twenty deals — and when they got there, they stopped. Not out of laziness, but out of pure logic: any deal within reach would simply roll into next month’s count, so why rush it?
“They would finish on 15 deals or 20 deals because they would then hold stuff over to the next month. There wasn’t that incentive to push them a little bit more.” added Kimber.
It was a perfectly rational response to the system in place. The problem was the system.
The state before Remuner:
- ❌ No way to implement or track bonus structures or enhanced commission tiers
- ❌ Manual spreadsheet approach too error-prone and limited to scale
- ❌ No performance visibility for reps beyond their basic target number
- ❌ Brokers consistently finishing exactly on target — then stopping
Why Remuner
The decision came down to two things: integration and flexibility. Remuner connected natively with their existing systems, which removed one of the usual friction points. But more importantly, it could actually handle the kind of incentive structure CLS Money wanted to build — not a flat-rate commission tool, but something genuinely capable of driving performance.
As Harley Kimber explains: “We could have built out a really simple commission structure, but we wanted something in place that was gonna really drive that extra performance. The nature of Remuner meant that we were able to implement exactly what we wanted to implement and how we wanted to implement it — and then give that visibility to the team, so they could see one extra deal was worth to them X amount of money.”
That last part is the key. Once a broker can see in real terms what one more deal is worth, the conversation about performance changes entirely.
The Impact
From managing to targets to managing to bonus
This is the shift that changed everything. Before Remuner, the target was the goal — hit it, collect your commission, done. Now, the target is just the minimum.
“We all of a sudden incentivised the sales team to not finish on what their target was. We were now managing staff to bonus rather than managing them to targets” added Kimber.
The distinction sounds subtle. It plays out very differently in practice. When the target becomes a floor rather than a ceiling, the whole conversation between managers and reps shifts — and so does what brokers choose to do with deals sitting in their top pocket.
The monthly meeting question
The most concrete change has been in how one-to-ones work. Managers no longer arrive with a number to tell someone to hit. The conversation starts somewhere completely different now.
In Harley’s own words: “The real change day to day is saying to the guys in their monthly meetings, ‘What do you wanna earn this month?’ They’ll give us a figure, and we say, ‘Right, this is how you’re gonna get that performance.'”
And the shift has gone even further than that. Reps are now coming into those meetings having already done the calculation themselves — they walk in knowing what they want to earn and exactly what they need to close to get there.
“Before we even go into a monthly meeting, they sometimes will walk in there and say, ‘This is what I wanna earn. I already know what I need to hit. I already know the figures I need to do.’ They don’t rely on us as management to tell them what they need to hit. They know.”, adds Kimber.
Star performers going above and beyond — by choice
Perhaps the most significant change has been at the top end of the team. CLS Money is now seeing above-target performance that isn’t driven by management pressure. It’s driven by the reps themselves.
“The star performers are going above and beyond because they want to, not because we’re telling them to anymore. They actually want to do it — and they’ve got the transparency within Remuner to see what the impact’s gonna be.”
When a broker can see that one extra deal this month means a specific amount of money, the decision to stay late, push a deal over the line, or chase one more referral becomes entirely their own.
Summing Up
For Harley and the CLS Money team, the shift isn’t really about software. It’s about what happens when a sales team can finally see, in real time, what their effort is worth.
“Sales teams should be motivated by money. This literally shows them what they’re gonna earn if they write X amount of business. Having that transparency is just vital — because they know what they need to do to become a top performer“, added Harley Kimber.
Ready to start managing your team to bonus?
If your sales team is finishing exactly on target every month — and you know there’s more in the tank — Remuner can help you unlock it. Book a demo with Remuner →
