The Intermediary – March 2026 - Flipbook - Page 82
T E C H N O L O GY
Opinion
Change is no longer
a project, it’s the
business model
F
or much of the past two
decades, technology
change in mortgage
lending has been
treated as an event. A
programme is launched,
consultants appointed, platforms
replaced, disruption absorbed.
The business stabilises. Aention
moves on. The cycle resumes when
regulation tightens or competition
forces action.
That model no longer reflects
operating reality. For lenders today,
change is structural and the need is
continuous. It sits alongside funding,
risk and pricing as a core discipline.
The pressures are well understood.
Regulatory expectations evolve
quickly, competition is intense, and
lenders’ ability to respond to market
movements, pricing variables, and
borrower needs is critical.
Technology estates built primarily
for stability rather than adaptability
are increasingly exposing lenders,
operationally and commercially.
Where criteria cannot be adjusted
quickly, retention journeys
reconfigured or servicing processes
reshaped, opportunities are lost
and lenders can find themselves
with either too much pipeline or
not enough. The market dynamics
today are fast-paced and far more
intertwined than historically.
Over the past five years,
technology transformation spend
has concentrated at the front of the
mortgage journey. Lenders have
focused on improving customer
experience for day-to-day banking,
and more recently, for sharpening the
refinancing self-service proposition.
Shiny front-ends are vital, but
without the ability to serve changing
needs, it’s not enough. Digital
decisioning, affordability automation
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The Intermediary | March 2026
and application experience also
need improvement.
Core banking and servicing
platforms, the systems underpinning
product transfers, refinancing, arrears
management and long-term customer
relationships, are hard to modernise.
They sit closer to capital treatment,
regulatory reporting and operational
risk. As a result, they have oen been
deferred. That deferral is now visible
in performance.
Retention economics are central to
returns. Product transfers account for
the majority of refinancing activity,
and brokers expect frictionless
execution. Borrowers are increasingly
willing to redeem early where service
or pricing disappoints. Where
servicing capability lags origination
capability, commercial leakage
follows. This is where the distinction
between transformation and
capability becomes material.
Origination, underwriting and
servicing are not vertical silos. They
form a single relationship that can
extend for decades. The supporting
architecture must evolve coherently
and continuously.
Regulation reinforces the point.
Outcome-focused supervision and
evolving affordability expectations
place sustained demands on data
quality, auditability, and management
information.
These are not one-off compliance
exercises, but ongoing obligations that
require tech capable of evidencing
decisions, monitoring outcomes, and
adapting reporting continuously. In
this environment, technology itself
becomes a regulated capability, rather
than a neutral delivery function
siing in the background.
Artificial intelligence (AI) models,
data integrations, and decision
support tools cannot be implemented
STEVE CARRUTHERS
is growth director at Fignum
once and then le untouched. They
require monitoring, recalibration,
governance, and oversight.
Time for discipline
The distinction between
transformation and capability
maers. Transformation implies
an end state, a point at which the
organisation can declare itself
modernised. Capability implies an
ongoing discipline, encompassing
architecture, data ownership, supplier
relationships, governance, and
organisational culture, as much as
soware delivery itself.
Preparedness for this new reality
does not correlate neatly with size.
Architectural flexibility and strategic
clarity maer more than scale. Some
mid-sized and specialist lenders,
operating with narrower product
sets and more recent platforms,
may be beer positioned to adapt
continuously than larger institutions
managing complex legacy estates.
Equally, scale can be an advantage
where sustained investment is aligned
with long-term governance.
Technology change has become
inseparable from how mortgage
businesses are run. The question is
no longer whether to transform, but
whether organisations are structured
to absorb, sequence, and sustain
change as part of normal operations.
The next phase of mortgage
technology is less about disruption
and more about permanence. The
lenders best positioned for the next
cycle will be those that treat change
itself as a core capability, continuously
exercised, governed and refined. ●
