The Intermediary –- June 2026 - Flipbook - Page 52
The Interview.
Morpheus Lending and kennek
the patchwork of spreadsheets, CRMs, loan
management systems and manual processes
that many specialist lenders have historically
relied on.
The Intermediary caught up with Michael
Fairhurst, commercial director at kennek, and
Matt Mawdesley, CEO and founder of Morpheus
Lending, to find out how technology is changing
the game in specialist lending.
MICHAEL
FAIRHURST
MATT
MAWDESLEY
Jessica Bird speaks with Michael
Fairhurst, commercial director at
kennek, and Matt Mawdesley, CEO and
founder of Morpheus Lending, about
deploying lender tech fit for the future
S
pecialist lending is being dragged
into a more digital era. Some
lenders are ahead of the curve,
but others will find out the
hard way what happens when
inevitable progress hits unfit
legacy systems.
This part of the lending
ecosystem has traditionally lagged, and with
good reason. Every aspect of specialist finance
calls for nuanced insights and human expertise.
From the simplest bridge to the most complex
development scheme, this market cannot be
served by algorithms alone.
Nevertheless, lenders that resist change are
missing a core point. Human expertise does not
have to mean manual processes, and nuance is
not the enemy of automation.
Morpheus Lending launched in 2024 with the
belief that there was a better way for clients
and brokers to access the specialist market. A
core part of how it does that today is through
its work with kennek, which aims to replace
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The Intermediary | June 2026
Pleasing the Amazon generation
While the pace of change when it comes to the
tools themselves accelerates with every passing
month, the core demand has not changed, and
will be familiar across all sectors.
Mawdesley explains: “Clients and brokers
want an easier way to access our products,
and they want to do that with as few manual
touchpoints as possible – quickly and with
little friction. One thing that has fundamentally
changed, particularly in the last 12 to 24
months, is that the technology available is now
far broader and accessible for less cost. It is now
markedly easier, quicker and cheaper to put that
technology in place and deliver value for your
clients and customers.”
No matter how easy the implementation,
this is still never going to be an instantaneous,
‘buy now’ product. Lenders are having to find
a balance between consumer expectations
around seamless user interfaces across all other
aspects of their lives, and managing the many
idiosyncrasies of specialist lending.
Fairhurst says: “If something looks terrible,
and they have to do 10 clicks for something
they expect to take two – because it does on
ASOS – that’s a problem. But because of the
idiosyncrasies – valuations, multiple portfolios
of properties, the adaptation of criteria on a
per funder basis and so on – there’s so many
moving parts on a bridging and development
deal, it’s impossible to automate everything.”
Mawdesley adds: “Even looking at a five-year
horizon, do I think all bridging loans will be
automated? Absolutely not. Do I think some
bridging loans will be automated? Yes – the
vanilla stuff where it’s pretty straightforward.
Even now, we can get 95% of the way there, and
we can do those deals in 20 or 30 minutes.
“But if we’ve got a £5m portfolio transaction
and across 17 assets and each of them are
completely different, it needs specialists who
