The Intermediary – December 2025 - Flipbook - Page 66
T E C H N O L O GY
Opinion
Lending tech
doesn’t need
to be 昀氀ashy
orkhorse tech
rarely makes
headlines, but
it makes all the
difference for
brokers.
Before I joined Gen H, the scrappy
start-up-turned-scale-up mortgage
lender, I spent years working with
large high street banks. With HSBC
and Virgin Money, I worked on high
impact projects with talented people
and gained privileged insights into
how the world of mortgages really
works. Not just the high-level balance
sheet bit, but the nuts and bolts, like
how loans were created and serviced
by operators on the front lines of
the business.
What always surprised me was how
much variation exists between – and
even within – each lender’s systems.
One of my favourite anecdotes from
this time was gaining a glimpse into a
competitor’s system – it was built on
what appeared to be the carcass of an
old airline ticket booking system.
As you can probably imagine, it
was slow, prone to break, and took
engineers a long time to fix. The
underwriters were praised less for
their sound lending judgement and
more for how quickly they could
leap, gazelle-like, between the 17 –
only a mild exaggeration – different
applications and green screens
required to actually make a decision.
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The Intermediary | December 2025
This is far from uncommon. Unfit
tech is a problem that pervades the
mortgage industry – from clunky
phone trees to conveyancers who still
require wet ink signatures and lenders
who only accept faxes.
On the right track?
Now, over the past year in particular,
lenders have made progress. But
lately, I’ve started to worry we’re
veering off the track. It feels we are
caught up in the excitement of shiny
new technology, especially artificial
intelligence (AI), and losing sight of
what really maers: making life easier
for brokers and customers.
One of the reasons I joined Gen H
was how the team uses technology. It
was a break with the traditions of the
industry. Instead of licensing soware
built in the ‘90s, the team was building
it all from scratch. We had complete
control over both how we worked and
how customers and brokers would
engage with us.
On the downside, it meant that if
something broke, we’d have to fix it
ourselves, fast. But on the upside,
we’ve been able to build lean, efficient
systems that future-proof our business
and are easy and intuitive to use.
This kind of thinking has to begin at
the beginning.
This approach has led to a series
of recent improvements that may
not sound glamorous, but make a
PETE DOCKAR
is chief commercial officer
at Gen H
huge difference. For example, we’ve
introduced automated ID checks
and created a new self-serve re-offer
function for brokers to swap to a lower
rate pre-completion if one becomes
available. We show applicant credit
commitments within the application
if they limit affordability so brokers
can tell us if we should ignore them.
We allow Direct Debits for more than
one person on the mortgage. And we
were the first lender to implement
Experian Boost, which takes into
account recurring payments like
rent and Council Tax, to increase an
applicant’s credit score.
None of these functions are
especially flashy by today’s standards.
They’re not AI phone agents or
AI application assistants, because
