The UK mortgage industry has seen significant changes in recent years, with technology playing a crucial role in transforming how loans are originated and serviced. As the sector becomes more digitised, financial institutions are seeking innovative solutions to streamline operations and improve customer experiences.
One company at the centre of this shift is finova, a provider of mortgage origination software.
In this week’s Behind the Idea, Chris Little, chief revenue officer at finova, discusses the company’s approach to addressing industry challenges and the technological advancements shaping the future of mortgage services.
Tell us more about your company and its offering
Chris Little, chief revenue officer at finova
finova is a technology provider serving the UK mortgage and savings sectors. Today, we are the largest provider in this area, supporting over 50 lenders, 3,000 mortgage brokers and 200 financial institutions.
Our solutions are focused on state-of-the-art SaaS digital originations, and cloud-based offerings such as our servicing platform.
finova also owns key IP in the broker CRM space, as well as a mortgage club, finova Payments and Mortgage Services – which means we’re the only vendor in the sector with coverage across all key areas.
What problem was your company set up to solve?
Twenty years ago, the average UK mortgage application was a highly manual and labour-intensive affair, clogged with paperwork and slow turnaround times. finova was set up to streamline that mortgage origination journey. Clearly, the market has evolved over the years, and we have consistently updated our offering to adapt to these changes.
In 2024, our methods are slightly different, and our solutions are more diverse, but our core values remain the same. We have invested in cloud-first technology, embraced the API economy and created new strategic partnerships, but we still address the same challenges for our clients.
We’ve invested in new, cutting-edge tech solutions, either via acquisition or core software development, but our ultimate aim is still to improve and streamline the mortgage origination journey and provide the best digital self-service to our end users.
Since launch, how has your company evolved?
The company has grown from a handful of staff with two to three clients in its first year to now servicing over 50 banking clients with around 400 FTEs, and that’s without mentioning our strong partnerships in the broker space. Of course, we are continually updating our tech and adapting our offering to address the pain points of lenders and brokers.
For example, we are always reaching out to our peers and pursuing partnerships with like-minded companies. Earlier this year, we extended our successful three-year collaboration with Hexaware, the global tech and business process services company, which has now become the very first independent implementation partner of our origination and servicing platforms. Together, we have pooled our technical expertise to give clients access to a range of top-notch ancillary services, including user acceptance testing and data migration.
finova will always be a software company at heart, but we never shy away from an opportunity to evolve. A lot has changed since our earliest days, of course. When finova was founded, SaaS and the cloud were also very much in their infancy, particularly within the financial services sector. Now, any organisation that neglects to adopt these technologies risks being left behind. finova has adapted to evolving market conditions by making strategic acquisitions and migrating our core loan servicing platform to Azure. These moves have allowed us to stay at the frontline of technological advancements in our key markets.
What has been the biggest challenge or most ‘tricky moment’ to overcome?
As the company has grown, we have worked with numerous clients operating in various areas including all facets of secured lending and savings. We have also moved up the value chain in terms of the size of customer we deal with, often handling multiple projects simultaneously. This naturally brings ‘growing pains’ as the company has scaled to accommodate demand.
I am happy to say that finova has been successful in addressing these issues in recent times via the onboarding of a very talented captive operation offshore team, as well as further enhancing our delivery offering with a large systems integrator to augment delivery and service support.
What are your biggest achievements or ‘proudest moment’ so far?
There have been many notable achievements at finova, from numerous product launches to such varied client success stories, so picking one is difficult. However, I was especially proud to recently oversee the rollout of two new upgrades to our Core Banking platform, Apprivo: ‘SmarterDocs’ and ‘Enhanced Tasks’.
These new additions follow the recent launch of our customer retention portal and are another key step in our journey to ensure that lenders continue to get the most from Apprivo. With several lenders starting to reduce rates on fixed mortgages, having a streamlined tech platform will be critical, and we are confident that these new modules have come at the right time.
How would you describe the culture of your company?
The culture here at finova is very open and inclusive. We employ a diverse mix of individuals from all backgrounds who come together to deliver great client solutions. We are continually nurturing our teams to unite around core values, which are all directed towards delivering exceptional value to our clients. If we can do that, then everything else becomes much easier.
What’s in store for the future?
At finova, we are always assessing the market and asking ourselves three questions – ‘what’s next?’, ‘what’s going to change the dial for our customers?’, and ‘what’s going to keep us ahead of the competition?’.
Our answer to some of these questions is Optimo, our new decision engine that combines intelligent pricing, affordability outcomes and streamlined scorecard models to help lenders deliver tailored outcomes for their customers. We anticipate that rapid decisioning will come to the forefront of the UK lending space, and so we have recently invested significant R&D into refining Optimo to an industry-leading standard.
This technology will support our customers in a variety of ways, from enabling access to tailored personalised pricing by aggregating numerous data sources, to delivering ‘black box’ instant lending decisions based on numerous risk and affordability factors.
We are excited about Optimo, both in terms of what its new platform can offer to our existing user base, but also the opportunities for growth in the wider market. This technology is not only powerful but can seamlessly slot into any existing system without requiring a complete overhaul – and that’s a very strong USP indeed.
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