FR: Can you share a bit about your background in the fintech sector?
I began my career over a decade ago in Accenture’s Financial Services practice, advising tier-1 banks on how to achieve ambitious financial targets, through a combination of people, process and technology transformation. However, as the digital era truly started to reshape the industry, I wanted to get closer to the technologies actually powering it, releasing the untapped value these opportunities create. Above all, I was keenly interested in fintech, with a particular focus on financial wellness and accessibility.
FR: What are your main duties as business development director?
My job is to ensure there is always an open channel between Finova and the market that we serve. Most days you will find me spending time with industry leaders or attending industry events. As a consultant, I’m now listening to banking executives, learning their pain points, and collaborating on finding the solutions. My ultimate goal is to help Finova scale as fast as possible so that our technology can benefit borrowers, brokers, and lenders. The only way I can do this is by listening to our customers, hearing what they need, and making sure that Finova can deliver for those needs.
FR: Why do you think the UK’s mortgage market has struggled to keep pace with fintech innovation?
Firstly, I don’t think it is necessarily fair to compare the pace of change to other financial services. Choosing a mortgage is among the most important financial decisions a person will ever make. As you might expect, this introduces a lot of hesitation into the process. It’s also true that smaller UK lenders are struggling to capture a robust market share. But as more lenders roll out new product lines with complex risk profiles, and as the cost of change plummets, the economics are finally making sense.
In 2025, a lender doesn’t need to endure a five-year transformation programme. A SaaS solution can get a new product up and running in no time. And that just wasn’t possible a few years ago. The partnership between open data and automation is changing everything, particularly how lenders can now receive real-time insights into an applicant’s financial situation through technologies like open banking, AI-driven underwriting, and identity verification. The shift means that the mortgage process, which once relied on manual input and outdated documentation, can now become significantly faster, more accurate, and more accessible.
FR: What’s the biggest tech challenge still holding back mortgage innovation?
Take a quick glance at our sector and you will see hordes of brokers, lawyers and other professionals, each with their own ways of doing things. The result is that any innovative product must flex to accommodate a wide range of processes, and this is not always straightforward. Yes, our sector has made some great progress, but we will always have ways to go in creating the most scalable and customisable product.
FR: In your view, which areas of the mortgage market are showing the most promise in 2025 and beyond?
If there’s one area I’m keeping a close eye on, it’s specialist lending. For instance, let’s take bridging as a starting point. In the past year, demand for bridging loans has surged, with UK completions forecast to hit record highs of £12.2 billion in 2025. Whether it is chain breaks, auction purchases, or refurbishment projects, more borrowers are turning to bridging for short-term finance that can be arranged quickly.
And this is just one single phenomenon. As the average age of the first-time buyers continues to climb, more and more homeowners will likely depend on lifetime mortgage offerings to manage their mortgage payments in retirement. Specialist mortgage products are no longer a niche, but an increasingly integral part of a diversified commercial offering. The gauntlet has been thrown down, and it’s up to lenders to adapt and ensure their systems are optimised to correctly assess a customer’s eligibility for a specialist product.
FR: What is one mortgage news headline that you would be delighted to see in 2025?
Simply put, anything relating to lenders doubling or even tripling their investments to more responsive decisioning engines. Let’s cast our minds back to the September 2022 mini-budget, an economic earthquake that led to a withdrawal of more than 40% of mortgage products from the market. No one – not a single aspiring buyer or professional underwriter – wants to see a repeat of those days.
It’s impossible to prepare for every scenario. Unexpected things happen every day, and the UK market is resilient. However, if the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that outdated and manual processes are not suited to a dynamic and changeable mortgage market. What I want to see is a modal shift in how lenders use technology, a total embrace of automation, personalised score cards and better decisioning tools that will enable lenders to reprice products – and keep a transaction moving along – even in times of upheaval. Our brokers and their customers deserve nothing less.
