The Intermediary –- June 2026 - Flipbook - Page 47
T E C H N O L O GY
Opinion
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interrogate. A lender receiving a
cost plan built in Excel, last updated
three months ago, is essentially being
asked to take it on faith. A broker
presenting that package to multiple
lenders is passing on the same risk:
that the numbers represent a snapshot
of a moment that has already passed.
Technology changes this. Not in a
vague, aspirational sense, in very
specific, practical ways that are
already reshaping how sophisticated
developers operate and how forwardthinking lenders assess deals.
Tech has allowed data to be captured
and delivered faster and faster in
recent years, APIs link directly into
CRMs – you name it, we have an
acronym. What we need to get to is
the normalising of accuracy, real-time
information snapshots, to maximise
the confidence in delivery, and brokers
that understand that do really well in
this industry.
Construction management
platforms give project teams live
visibility into programme, cost, and
subcontractor performance. Quantity
surveying soware integrates with
cost databases that update in near realtime, flagging when material costs
have moved and what that means for
contingency. Building information
modelling (BIM) creates a digital
twin of the project that surveyors,
engineers, and funders can interrogate
from the same shared source of truth,
rather than working from documents
that diverge the moment they are sent.
For developers, the benefit is
control. For lenders, it is verifiability.
And for brokers, it is the ability to
present a client’s case not as a story,
but as a system – a live, auditable
For most of the
industry’s history, [data]
has been assembled
manually, updated
sporadically, and
presented in formats that
make it genuinely difficult
to interrogate”
record of how a project is being
managed, not just how it was planned.
That distinction maers
enormously when credit commiees
are under pressure. A developer
who can demonstrate real-time
cost tracking and programme
management is not just a beer credit
risk in theory. They are demonstrably
lower risk because the mechanisms for
catching and correcting problems are
already in place.
There is also a harder-edged
commercial argument here. The
brokers who develop genuine
fluency in how technology is
reshaping development, who can
talk to a developer about their project
management approach and to a lender
about what that means for risk, are
building a capability that most of their
competitors do not have.
Development finance is a
relationship business, but
relationships built on expertise last
longer than those built on access.
The access is commoditising. The
expertise is not.
Property development has always
rewarded the people who understood
what the numbers actually mean, and
tech is changing what the numbers
look like, how quickly they can be
trusted, and how much evidence a
funder needs before they will commit.
Brokers who get ahead of that shi
will find it considerably easier to
get deals done, and to hold onto the
clients who maer most when the
market tightens. ●
June 2026 | The Intermediary
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