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The Inside Track on Modernizing Mortgage and Lending Platforms · FintechOS Evolv

0:06
Welcome back to FinTechOS Evolve podcast.
0:09
I'm delighted to have Josh and Ben with me on the sofa here from Woodhurst Consulting.
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We've done some fabulous work in 2025. I'm sure that will continue to 2026 as well.
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Working with banks, tier twos, building societies, specialist vendors,
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very heavily into the mortgage market.
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I guess Ben, we'll start with you and give us
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a little preamble about Woodhurst and what's some
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of the problems you're trying to solve for that cadre
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of customers thanks mark so
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i think it's good to start with the purpose that
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we've aligned on in the last few years which is
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we exist really because we believe that everyone deserves better access to financial
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solutions yeah so um we've had a real luxury at woodhurst of starting the business
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seven years ago thinking about right well for everything we've seen in financial
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services talking to clients what are their problems and can we create a consultancy around that so
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I think it is good to talk about the problems we exist to solve because that.
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Segues nicely into therefore what we're set up to do so
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a lot of our clients these building societies tier
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twos um so we we predominantly
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work with organizations of anywhere between sort of
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a hundred up to you know into the thousands of people but
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we don't at the moment work uh that regularly with
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the really large global tier one banks there's still time still
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time we'll get there we'll get there and um the problems
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i think everyone will have heard these before but we'll just touch
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on them just so we're we're on the same page these guys
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have been around a while so they're often heritage players they've
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got a really powerful brand they've carrying some.
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Uh legacy processes so uh things
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are quite complex when you look behind the scenes the technology
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um can can be modern but often is is
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not it's quite common that they're sometimes on-prem
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or even if they're in the cloud there is still a lot
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of what people would refer to as these legacy
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tech problems they're with it they're in an immature place with
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data um and so the problem that
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they're actually telling us is we want to grow originations
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whether that's originations of savings or the mortgage book
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um we're finding that we're constrained by the
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fact that if we try to do that currently we're going to have to
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grow headcount really to accommodate to a point
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where it's it's not a it's not a sound business case
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especially it's just increasing it's getting higher and exactly
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so we we see ourselves as existing
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to solve that problem of being able to grow
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but being able to do it in a way that is actually then
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going to make them competitive in a market where they can't compete often with
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the balance sheet like the big six banks yeah so they really do need this efficiency
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play like you said with the cost to serve um and we are there to solve those
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problems and we're going to come on to it but broadly we we do that by providing
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people who are familiar with.
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The operating model of an organization that has a much lower cost
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to serve so we know what good looks like um and
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i think a lot of our clients also have an understanding of their employed
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people that have worked at some of the neos they will they will have probably
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come from bigger banks have had longer modernization programs and a lot's been
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delivered but um it's no easy job is it so no it's a you've been there it's
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it's tough um any transformation program is fraught with,
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risks and you know often fail we know that we know the stats you
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know over sentencing will fail in one way shape or form but i
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think you're right in terms of having the right people who've been there have
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got the scars you know they've bled through it they've they've can take the
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successes and and the failures and make it better is absolutely going to be
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key when you're sitting in front of of your clients and you'll mate you would
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have been fantastic in the building site sector um you know some great.
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Great contracts won, some great customers won. We've worked together a few times.
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And I think over the last couple of years, two or three years now,
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we've probably seen that shift of conversation around building sites being kind
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of these sleepy kind of institutions.
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And now looking across the landscape and seeing all this competition from especially
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lenders and alternative lenders coming in, stealing the mortgage market and
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realizing, oh God, we're going to have to change something.
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But where's the balance of the change of their culture and the ways they're
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working and for their members versus digitalization?
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And Trish, you've been involved in a lot of those conversations.
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So, you know, have you seen that start to change?
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Yeah, I mean, that perception of a building site is a sleepy,
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sleepy organization. I think it really is purely a perception thing.
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When we're talking to our client base, they're all hugely ambitious,
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hugely strategically focused.
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And almost exclusively the conversation
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is about growing the lending book and then everything else
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that needs to happen around that and a lot of them talk about doubling
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lending within x years as ben said without dramatically increasing
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headcount and when you think about that as a problem statement when
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you are sort of beset with not just legacy technology
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but probably a lot of the time with limited headcount
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limited capacity the capabilities are often there
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but because of those capacity challenges you know they're being applied towards
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just the day-to-day you know managing the the
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society um servicing existing customers and
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things like that so how do you drive and enact change in
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that type of environment and then the capital pressure on top
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of that in the economic economic environment
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that we're sort of going through at the moment it's a lot of compounding
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factors that certainly don't speak of a sleepy society a sleepy organization
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it's a it's a highly ambitious set of organizations that are just managing and
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dealing with a variety of challenges that you need to overcome to actually enact
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really positive change yeah i think the.
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Culture now within building society it's really picked up
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in the last couple of years and i think we've seen a lot of change
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around the leadership of building societies and
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maybe that's because people come from maybe the bigger banks that have come
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in and there is actually there is this balance of the old ways of doing things
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where you're you're so very member specific you're the human element of those
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ships is absolutely key and critical versus how do you attract the the customer
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of tomorrow by enabling digital within that journey.
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Um, I think you're starting to see that come through in building societies.
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Um, I think, uh, I, I guess the, the driver has, has gotta be a competition within the market.
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People are probably losing their market shares, but was it 42 building societies at the moment?
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Will there be 43? Will there be 40? Is it decreasing? My son's 18,
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probably looking for a mortgage in the first company.
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Would he first turn to the local building society? It's how do you capture that market?
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It's a dilemma, really. I think on the mortgage side for a building society,
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the majority of them are 95% plus intermediated.
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So the conversation for your son probably isn't, oh, am I going to go towards
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Skipton Building Society or Leeds or Nottingham?
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It's going to be, when I go with my problem statement and the thing I'm trying
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to achieve to my mortgage broker, if that's the first place they look,
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how is the mortgage broker then going to make sure that they get access to
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the societies and how do the societies make sure that
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they are as easy to do business with as possible
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with that broker community that's that's the challenge a
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lot of side on on that side of things so you've got
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this yes you've got all of the competition coming through and
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making sure that the products are as competitive as possible
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that they're priced effectively that you're targeting your niches
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so that you can actually stand out in a crowded market but also
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that your experiences are suitable um
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to make sure that you're as easy as possible to do business with for your
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broker and the end customer at the end of end of
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the line as well and those expectations have increased dramatically in
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recent years because of a proliferation of technology
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generally in the market but just the experiences where we're used to day-to-day
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as well and you hear so much about like the increase of focus on user experience
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and what have you that hasn't been applied towards this sector in the last five
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years until you know 2022 2023 that's probably when we started to see little bit more of a shift.
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And the other specialist lenders who are not mutuals, which is the other people,
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the other organizations serving 25% of the mortgage market,
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given that the other 75% is serviced by the big six banks, they're having exactly
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the same challenges. We're seeing the same projects.
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We're seeing the same technology solutions being applied, same broker front
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end systems, same core solutions.
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So that is the common thread that, as Josh said, stitches this all together.
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On the mortgage side, for most specialist lenders in building societies,
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it's attracting the broker in and making it easier for them.
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The broker's always got to be an extension of a customer. absolutely because
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their customers are expecting the same thing aren't
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they right so if if you're slow as a broker you're going to lose your customers
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equally brokers shouldn't have to be manually entering
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applications into ports anymore then they know that more importantly so
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they'll go they'll go where they can get the outcome they
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need which is always probably helping their their customer buy
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a home um they'll go where it's easier to do business and
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our clients recognize that and it's the same on the saving side you
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know a lot of um these smaller institutions tier
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two banks building societies didn't have a decent app
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for offering savings products and advice
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and you know that was okay for
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a point because of brand loyalty with certain
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demographics but now everyone recognizes that
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it's not just about attracting younger customers into the
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organization just keeping um great great
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retired folks um they want that too they want the ability
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to have digital experiences where they want to so yeah that's really what pretty
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much cuts across all of the class we're working with um and i think with the
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big banks too they're doing the same aren't they in their own way just on that
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point of sort of you know even even your sort of retirees are looking for digital
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experiences i get i've made the point a few times previously but.
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Millennials which is sort of this way this generational wave of people that have been.
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Embedded with digital experiences are we millennials i'm a millennial i think
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i might I think it goes all the way till about 44 now.
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The oldest, the oldest millennium. Okay. So.
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Yeah, I thought you'd be right in that bracket. Well, you'd be an honorary millennial.
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Pull me back in. I just watched it, Godfather. When I thought I was out, you'd pull me back in.
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The point being, you know, you think of this wave of people that are just used
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to digital experiences from sort of their childhood and what have you as being much younger people,
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and the like but the reality is you know mid-40s middle
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age and later for a lot of people you know there's the the retirees are used
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to these types of experiences as well and that that demand is only going to
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increase yeah and i suppose the other thing that's becoming more of a theme
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just to add to that as another example is making the business more resilient and safer that again.
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You've seen we've seen this move into the cloud we've seen
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benefits from that we've also seen new vulnerabilities
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and risks emerging so i think we're trying
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to deliver ambitious achievable modernizations
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that take you know the clients into new space with
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some new technology which exciting and then there's also
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a lot of work on the other side around ops res so we're
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seeing a lot more of that as you know these incidents are
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increasing um and i think clients
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become more aware of that as they're getting targeted that's that's a
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fact of it you know to improve you've got to be you know
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more digital uh but then you've also got to have new new controls
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and measures in place to keep safe yeah and i agree and
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you guys uh certainly over last year you've
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been in the room with boards and
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exco right and and a lot of um it's not not criticism but a lot of focus gets
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put on actually having the right people to drive this level of change and you
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guys are in the room and you'll have an insight into that how um how are you
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seeing kind of the boards and excos now starting to think about this type of
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level of change and how are they approaching it?
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Is there a balance that are struck between the budgetary cost or keeping their
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members or the customers happy?
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You're in it. So what have you seen come out of these forums?
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Yeah, that's right, Mark. I think we spend a lot of time in the boardroom and it's always...
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It's always um you know challenging conversations as they should
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be that's what the board said to exist and i i wrote down a few things
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that i think where we've seen it work well and where
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we've seen it be challenging for our clients so um what's
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working really well with some of our clients is where the
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board bring first-hand experience yeah of
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doing this themselves as individuals and they
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have these good contacts in their network that they
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can bring in to support the exco so it's really you
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feel in the room there's this real support from the board with really good
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tangible examples and what the watch points are
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okay for the exco yeah the second one is they they
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do the board really now do demand rigor and well
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thought through decisions um but but
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they trust that the exco is has they trust
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in the materials that are coming to board and that the process has been.
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Done so they're not picking holes in all of that but they're actually
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but they're really demanding that rigor and the third one i
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wrote down was um they really the board
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have to really understand the strategic vision of
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the business the exco so that sometimes there can be
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a bit of a disconnect but where it's working well the board
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and exco are not disconnected over that strategic vision
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yeah and just two things where i think
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sometimes it can get a bit go a bit wrong we've seen it get
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challenging is sometimes the board does
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get caught up in detail um like
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an unnecessarily level of detail and that can
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when you're slowing decisions whilst that sometimes sounds appropriate if you
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lose momentum in a modernization especially at smaller organizations but so
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so too at big ones it becomes really difficult to get the momentum going so
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they've got to move at pace and therefore you know we've we've seen that happen
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um and the second which is a i think a bugbear of a
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ex-cosis. Some board members don't know.
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Um have been seen to sort of just chuck in random technology
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um and they you
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know and ideas um and one of them might
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feel it's their need to always say something like yeah but where is ai being
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used in this thing we're doing here but and it's just not appropriate you know
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so that back to my first point that they're really bringing first-hand experience
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of what works well what doesn't not just chucking in yeah you know random ideas
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to sort of as gotchas to the exco yeah the governance and there's good government.
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I sometimes think, coming from a banking background,
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Obviously, governance is there for all the right reasons. It's a safeguard.
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It's the guardrails you operate in.
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It's there to help you challenge and to set your strategy and make sure you're
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dealing with the red flags that's coming up.
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But I don't think there's a difference between governance and good governance
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where actually good governance can sometimes be less. Yeah. But just do it better.
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Exactly. Do it quicker. Do it in a more agile fashion. Um, I still sometimes
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feel that institutions go in a very traditional way and feel that more governance
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gives them more protection.
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Yes. I think it doesn't actually, for all the reasons you've mentioned, it slows you down,
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momentum starts to get lost and actually you start to lose traction and maybe
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a little bit of confidence and suddenly people start playing up to the governance
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work rather than actually the work that needs to be done. Yeah.
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I'll give you, go on Josh. No, go on. Give me an example.
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No, I'm not going to throw anyone on the bus here, but I think it's what a lot
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of our clients have gone through recently.
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You begin your modernization, you've set up some kind of modernization oversight committee.
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So this is a subgroup of the boards of the board that have to stay closer to the program detail.
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Now we've seen that work well sometimes, but we've actually seen recently quite
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a few clients bin that off because it was just slowing things down and also
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i think it can create a problem for the other neds who then suddenly don't feel
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as responsible for it so you're absolutely right just getting a good balance,
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i think there's been a lot of there's been a lot of experimentation on this
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front over the last few years so speak to people who look like they're getting
16:26
the governance right and and get some opinions on that because if you get that
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right the right level you're really looking with the view what's the minimum
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amount of governance we need to stay safe and not go where some people go which is just OTT I had a,
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different example but had a situation last last year
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on one day where we had two board meetings in
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a day with different clients one up north one
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down south and i was sort of about eight hours of travel
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in between um the one in the morning both of them were presenting pretty much
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the same thing we'd run an assessment process we'd been for our due diligence
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we were sharing with the board the recommendations and conclusions that been
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drawn through those through those processes um the first.
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When swimmingly, sort of breezed free, probably had the right people in the
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room that had been appropriately briefed ahead of time.
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And the recommendations resonated with them. They could see the rationale and
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were confident in the level of due diligence that had taken place.
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Same process, slightly different conclusions because it's a different society.
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But in the afternoon session or evening board session that I went to,
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it was a completely different situation for one reason or another.
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And I think a lot of it was due to the way that the board had been engaged throughout
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the process, level of scrutiny and accountability that they thought that they
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had and they wanted to apply towards it.
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It was a far more challenging situation and a far more challenging conversation.
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And we needed to go through a number of actions out the back of it to sort of
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close that down and give them the level of confidence that they need. So I think Ben's right.
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You need to get towards a minimum level of governance to be effective.
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But also you need to look at the engagement path across any transformation program
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and any strategic course of activity that you're taking and go,
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right, what are the right touch points and who are the right people to get involved?
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And how do we establish the right levels of accountability and responsibility
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here? So people aren't overstretching and getting to a point that does ultimately
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slow down progress, because that's the real killer with all of this.
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If you have strategic ambitions that say, in X years, I want to achieve Y.
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In five years, I want to double lending growth, for instance,
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the longer it takes you to get things moving and off the ground,
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the harder it's going to be to actually achieve a business case that stacks up.
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Because across that five-year period that you've set out, if you've established
18:51
a business case effectively, you're going to have a really tight sort of payback model.
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If you reduce that down to four years, then the business case will never stack
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up and you'll come up with more and more reasons not to do something.
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More and more reasons not to move. And that's what time really is.
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Really gives people an excuse to say, I'm not sure about this anymore.
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And that's the killer of transformation. That's the killer of change.
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A lot of these institutions just don't have the bandwidth and the experience
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and expertise to have a three-year program.
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And actually, what drives realistic transformation and modernization today is
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where they get the biggest bang for their buck.
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And we're talking about origination mortgages.
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How do you get more in the funnel how do you engage your brokers
19:37
better how do you grow your business that way and i
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guess that's where a lot of the success uh you know
19:43
we've had together fintech os and and woodhouse is actually being
19:45
in front of those customers and showing that there is a
19:49
better way to do it and it doesn't isn't going to take three years it's going
19:52
to take months rather than years it's not going to take multi-millions of pounds
19:55
it's going to take hundreds of thousands of pounds instead and actually we can
19:58
put start to put that in the hands of brokers and your members really quickly
20:03
to kind of demonstrate the value, demonstrate that momentum and that speed.
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I think that's probably the conversation I'm seeing happen a lot. Definitely.
20:14
Okay, good. Right, good. Short and sweet. Short and sweet. Absolutely. If I had a magic...
20:21
I could have said it better myself. Podcast is over. But do you think,
20:26
from whether it's Buildersite or indeed special lenders, alternative lenders,
20:30
do you really think it is the onboarding, the credit lending,
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the AI element, that's going to drive the most amount of transformation for these organizations?
20:41
Is that the lowest hanging fruit that people can grab onto?
20:49
Low hanging fruit is an interesting term, isn't it? Because you don't just look
20:52
at the technology position and the experiences that you have in place.
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You also have to look at all of the processes that sit behind it and actually
20:59
where are those points of churn and where are we coming up against actually
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organizational blockers or process blockers or people blockers or whatever it may be.
21:07
You can sit with these businesses and banks and building sites,
21:12
actually get into the nuts and bolts of it and actually really help them define
21:15
their requirements because sometimes they don't know what they don't know.
21:18
Yeah, and that's a big part of it a lot of the time.
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I think that the low-hanging fruit is probably the, you'll call it sort of simple
21:25
process change really if you take a step back and say, well,
21:29
why don't you remove this for I check?
21:30
But actually it's not simple process change
21:33
within the context of that society because it's there for a reason
21:36
and it has a history and somebody knows why that's been put in place and
21:39
you need to start um breaking down those
21:42
barriers bit by bit to try and get people moving towards
21:45
some level of change some level of improvement some level of efficiency gain
21:49
if you look at the sort of the experiential layer and the technology layer where
21:53
are the opportunities for for big wins i i think on the underwriting side of
21:58
things massively you see a lot of um organizations that we work with the underwriters
22:03
process somewhere between one and.
22:05
Three cases a day let's say on average in reality
22:09
if you are leveraging technology that is
22:11
available to you today you know we've all got access to it we've used
22:14
the ai term already um you can
22:17
massively increase that without exposing the organization to greater
22:20
risk and actually you might make better decisions out the back of it so
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underwriting is a is a huge part of the puzzle and ben
22:27
alluded to at the start that brokers shouldn't be expecting to
22:30
have to fill in reams and reams of manual forms anymore actually
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the more you can do to to make that process as seamless as
22:36
possible yeah as user friendly as possible just for small little
22:39
tweaks to the user experience you're going
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to make massive amount of change there um and then
22:45
when it comes to sort of the way that you set up
22:48
and establish your products and your back-end systems and sort of
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distribute them out to market i think that's something where we
22:54
see an awful lot of time energy and attention being
22:57
spent towards in terms of the way that you price it the
22:59
way that you sort of configure all of the niche bits of criteria that
23:03
sit across a lending product or what have you and that can take
23:05
a lot of time um internally from your product team from change teams from testing
23:10
teams before you distribute them so yeah quick quick wins is an interesting
23:14
term i think there's a number of areas if organizations look at it as a holistic
23:18
piece where you can go right there's some real opportunity here for change and
23:21
let me pick up on something you said mark because i think it's really important so.
23:25
I've got a client at the moment and we are at the start of the modernization
23:27
and they're a big specialist lender,
23:30
which is important because I think this kind of straddles perhaps what some
23:33
of the tier one banks are seeing versus what everyone right down to the smallest
23:37
organizations are seeing. And that's how do you eat the elephant?
23:41
So in this particular case, what they've done is some brilliant analysis going
23:45
in, which is they've looked at their operational data, which everyone should have.
23:49
And they've said as a leadership team like this
23:52
kind of reinforces where we knew the hotspots were but it gives us
23:55
the empirical data to start with yeah we've done gone right rather
23:58
than and this is where it's changed i think with modernization or
24:01
digital transformation in the last five years especially rather than
24:04
go to board and say we need 20 million pounds to spin up a massive program that's
24:09
going to completely modernize our business and solve all our pain we're going
24:13
to chunk it up and it's about telling the board how we're going to eat the elephant
24:17
and where we're going to go next so what we're seeing with like people who are
24:21
what you probably call as.
24:23
Successful transformation leaders in
24:26
their organization they're doing that they're they are
24:29
incrementally modernizing their business they're not taking
24:32
this big bang approach and there's some some more things that we're
24:35
seeing that i think are probably good to talk about because there'll
24:39
be traits that everyone who's doing modernization will
24:41
have and and perhaps this will be useful to them because they think right.
24:44
These are the things like that are working for other people
24:47
so they're being super vocal and
24:50
uh communicative with their their vision for the
24:53
business which they've they've taken sort of the strategy and they've
24:56
said let's let's give put some meat on the bones there
24:59
let's call it we call it a north star at woodhurst so uh and
25:02
and it seems to work well for clients so they're you
25:05
can't over communicate you're you're saying this is
25:08
what we're going to do this is how we're going to break it down and each time
25:11
we incrementally like modernize we're going to shout about it and say
25:13
well you know what worked well and what didn't and then we can take it forward they're
25:17
they're also um they're also prioritizing
25:21
ruthlessly they are they recognize that
25:24
you can't solve too much at once so you
25:27
know with if you're breaking down for example a mortgage
25:30
origination modernization you know they're
25:33
not trying to look at the entire end-to-end journey of a
25:36
mortgage and and spin up a program that solves all of that they might
25:39
say where where is it where do we yeah they're
25:41
setting it down so they say well maybe we can we can start with the underwriting
25:45
process and and work there first and then then go to the broker portal and it's
25:49
different you personalize it for everyone um and another point that i think
25:53
is is so key because we're seeing clients saying this more and more we felt
25:58
like this for some time at woodhurst but it's.
26:01
To adopt where possible i think you
26:04
know we will come on to it a bit because you wanted to talk
26:07
about where vendor selections go wrong um they
26:09
go they go wrong in the implementation that does or doesn't work
26:13
and the ones that are working and the
26:16
successful therefore the successful modernization leaders out there
26:19
they are doing everything they can to say to the
26:21
business we're going to need to adopt it and that means we're going
26:24
to have to do things differently yeah because you know
26:27
believe it or not the these modern vendor solutions
26:30
they're not going to do it the way we used to do it yeah and
26:33
i agree like um many a time i use the same
26:35
analogy about ferrari and fiat it gets boring now but when
26:39
you i haven't heard it have you not heard it you build a ferrari but drive it
26:42
like a fiat so sometimes you say you you adopt a technology platform but you
26:48
don't change your process for the technology you do it that way around so you
26:51
end up spending a whole bunch of money on a new piece of kit but don't change
26:54
the fundamental issues of the business so yeah it,
26:58
it's getting better to be fair you see it all the time but I think a lot of
27:01
people have realised that now actually technology isn't necessarily the silver bullet.
27:05
It's more of a, it's an enabler to get you there.
27:08
You have to change fundamentally what you do as a business and actually use
27:12
this opportunity to kind of clear the skeletons out of the cupboard and almost
27:17
fry away the old business process manuals and say,
27:19
okay, now let's design from how we think it should be today rather than what it is.
27:24
And it does come back to a bit of experience and expertise, but that's where
27:27
you guys can come in and actually show what the art of possible is.
27:31
That's the big thing. if you are going to take that model, it's all about having
27:36
the expertise that allows you to properly design processes,
27:40
approaches, experiences, journeys, all of those good words to make sure that
27:44
you are introducing something that is going to be good and fit for purpose and is going to last,
27:49
strategically focused and really considering what customers want,
27:52
brokers want, colleagues want as well because you need to look at all of those angles.
27:56
If you try and do that, I think for a lot of societies or smaller lenders,
28:01
you'll have a you'll have a vision but unless
28:04
you've got that broad and collective view of
28:07
what good really looks like which i think is it's not
28:10
just where consultants um fit in i
28:12
think we do play that role it's where technology providers fit in it's
28:15
absolutely where some of your um sort of implementation consultants and some
28:19
of your architects are really able to shape what that journey looks like um
28:23
and it's also where if you bring new blood into the organization that have seen
28:27
what's happened in in different scenarios they can contribute towards that but
28:30
You absolutely need that vision and you absolutely need that view of what good
28:34
really, really looks like.
28:35
Chugging it up into bite-sized chunks, you've read my playbook.
28:38
I think that is absolutely fundamental success because when you start putting value...
28:44
The hands of the broker, into the hands of the end user, and they start to see
28:49
that their vision is coming true, it just breathes confidence into the program
28:55
rather than waiting. Nobody can wait three years. I'm sorry.
28:59
People have forgotten what it's about. The reality is the people who have agreed
29:02
that's probably long gone.
29:04
Nobody's waiting three years. Even waiting a year is, you know,
29:08
your borderline possibly not even there.
29:11
So actually putting these into drops of value across the way and actually getting
29:16
people using the platform and the process and adopting it is going to be absolutely
29:21
fundamental to success.
29:23
And I mean, I see it all the time where people promise something all the time
29:27
and it's never delivered.
29:28
So when you're sitting in the board and you have those conversations,
29:31
you go, actually drop one is this and it's because of that.
29:33
And you drop two is now coming in the next two footprints and you can actually
29:37
show it in the hands of users. Yeah.
29:39
And it requires, and some of my clients have said this to me recently,
29:43
and I'm so pleased to hear it, it requires the board and some of the ex-co to
29:48
take a leap of faith. Yeah.
29:49
Because if you go down the, there's no perfect way to do this.
29:53
If there was, everyone would have done it by now.
29:56
But it requires the board to take a leap of faith in the business case,
30:00
because what's held some organizations
30:02
back, and they've told me this themselves, is, you know, we've.
30:06
Our thirst for you know full information on
30:09
the business case has kind of held us back and i
30:12
think you just look around and if i was a board member
30:15
in exco myself i'd be doing the same who's doing
30:17
really good numbers what's their setup yeah and i'd
30:20
go right okay well there's the proof yeah because
30:23
it can be done so you know that spending the money will get
30:26
you there but you're going to have to incrementally move forward and
30:29
like you say if you do that you'll get a benefits case sort
30:32
of showing its value early on and that gives you faith
30:35
in the next ones but that's important too because i
30:37
don't i don't want people to think that there are people out there
30:40
that that have this dream business case that
30:43
shows all the value and it's all everything's trapped back in a
30:46
perfect excel model that's a fantasy and we
30:48
need to we just need to bust that myth because that's holding
30:51
some people back you've got to take that leap of faith um
30:55
and by being incremental it actually de-risks that you
30:57
you can start to show some results and you can course correct if
31:00
you need to because frankly you'll you'll come up with
31:03
my this is how i chunk up the elephant i'll start with the trunk
31:06
and then i'll move to the head but you might find after doing the
31:09
first bit that actually you thought you were going to go there next that makes
31:12
more sense to go over here and then we can react and that's a good modernization
31:15
actually changing your mind throughout where to go next because there's more
31:18
value and it makes sense and the dependencies are better understood and you're
31:22
not going to rely on a group complaints function um you know that might be a blocker for.
31:26
That now so you'll you'll see you see where to go so that is it is definitely
31:31
proving to be a much more uh successful way to go about it always trunk first
31:35
though right always trunk yeah yeah you you well we're going to go into the
31:39
devil because fintech os is indeed a vendor but you talked about vendor selection
31:42
a minute ago i wanted to get into it because it's always interesting because you are.
31:46
You're part of that selection criteria, right?
31:50
So you're out in the market, you're looking at which platforms are being used,
31:54
which ones are up and coming, what are the problems they're trying to address,
31:57
what are they solving for what car drive customers they sold it for, what segments.
32:02
And, you know, we've worked together a couple of times now in a successful way,
32:05
but, you know, without being too subtle about it,
32:08
what brought you to FinTechOS and
32:12
how did that help shape some of the conversation you had with
32:15
some of those uh those those lenders yeah i
32:18
mean like you say we we take a reasonably wide view
32:21
of the market um we we are
32:25
independent in our approach but we we certainly have
32:28
views based on client need the
32:31
strategy that people are undertaking the types of requirements that they have
32:34
because they're all subtly different despite working in the same field we
32:37
have an idea of appropriateness uh for different clients
32:40
based on our understanding of the market i think on fintech
32:44
os's side i think the the sort of the
32:46
flexibility of the platform if you like not in a
32:49
an overly adapt rather than adopt kind of
32:52
way but the fact that actually you've got this sort of really highly
32:55
functional platform that's suitable to support
32:58
broker engagement colleague engagement customer engagement and
33:02
that you have this sort of ease of integration across really
33:05
an unlimited level of the market i think
33:08
that really appeals to people very easy to use very
33:11
configurable um for you know the lay person if you like from what i've seen
33:17
and and you talk in the right way to clients right you really demonstrate a
33:21
level of expertise of the lending journey in a way that um i think everybody
33:27
tries to but it really comes to life in the way that fintech os presents it and i think for me.
33:31
You know seeing the platform live you almost do start with
33:34
a blank sheet and build a full mortgage journey in
33:37
front of you in the demo yeah if you've got three hours to demo your
33:40
solution you're able to go from blank slate to
33:43
here's a fully end-to-end journey with a new product that we created
33:46
today that's fully priced and able to be distributed out to the
33:49
market and that is that is incredibly powerful yeah because that's
33:52
a you know one to two month turnaround time
33:55
for a lot of people today yeah there's a lot of demo
33:57
hype out i mean i've sat on the other side of the table as you know and you watch a
34:01
lot of demos and you think yeah yeah this
34:04
is sales material no this isn't quite real but actually if
34:07
you can sit in front of um you know
34:10
product people it people frontline people and go actually i've pretty much built
34:17
a you know relatively standard mortgage in a place of five minutes into the
34:20
platform and this is how how we visualize the journey and you can then start
34:26
to say, well, actually it's flexible enough to do it.
34:28
If you want to put this bit up here and you want to change this bit here,
34:30
you have to do it in a kind of a low code capacity.
34:34
And here's a level of ecosystem integrators because the platform can't integrate
34:39
into these, it's never going to work.
34:40
But how that data then flows through into, if it's a decision engine,
34:44
your pricing, your risk-grading piece, and how easy you can then build that
34:48
and then spin it up to say, and this is what your customer, your broker journey could look like.
34:54
It's not salesware. It's not, you know, it's actually, this is what we've done
34:58
in the space of three hours.
35:00
And I always find, sitting on the other side of the table,
35:03
well what i don't want is to be able to have all these
35:06
lovely products and journeys it's great it's great
35:09
for today thank you i'll go to market but we'll but
35:11
we'll know that in reality you have to change
35:14
them you have to chop and change them you have to create little branches you
35:18
have to quickly spin up a new one and if
35:20
you then have to go back to the vendor or the si to say i
35:23
need and you're writing checks for change requests or
35:26
suddenly they add up so being able to hand
35:29
the keys to the car over okay in a controlled way
35:32
they've got to learn it they've got to train they've got to be certified but so here's
35:35
the keys this is how easy it is to make a pricing change
35:38
or you want to spin up a a new variant of a
35:41
mortgage or you want to add a new benefit or a new bundle in or
35:43
this is how easy you can do it don't have to come to my master here you go
35:46
go do it this is the agility you want in the business to
35:49
be able to quickly go to market and i think if you look at you
35:53
know handing over the keys in a controlled way you you had a
35:55
stat from one of the clients that you spoke to the amount of money they were
35:58
spending on change requests each year you think if you actually just brought
36:01
that in-house you train up a couple of people that know how to use the platform
36:04
and you maintain a strong working relationship with a vendor that business case
36:08
in itself adds up instantly because you can drive all of that change yourself
36:12
for a fraction of the price of what you were paying previously.
36:16
Do you know how much they cost yeah come on yeah i mean this client
36:19
was up there was a you know mid-tier specialist lender
36:22
spending a quarter of a million a year on change requests and
36:25
it wasn't that that shocked me it was the fact
36:28
that they said we get no value from that so
36:31
instead what we're going to do this year was we're not paying for any
36:34
we're not using any of that change request budget and we are we
36:37
have done an in-house development with a with a tech partner
36:40
yeah um and and this is the way that i think a lot of people
36:43
are going so if you're stuck with a vendor that
36:46
doesn't hand over the keys then perhaps the
36:49
decision to make is could spend that money on something else i
36:52
guess you have to then get married to that vendor right you are you're
36:55
stuck with them um i know obviously the contractual stuff them
36:58
but you are it's very difficult to to move away
37:01
and i think a platform that doesn't enable you
37:04
to go out to the market and start partnering
37:07
with other best-in-class services whether it
37:10
be an eid and v player whether it be open banking open accounting and
37:14
the ability to evolve your business and your product and your process if you
37:20
are stuck to a platform that you then have to go and physically rebuild that
37:24
stuff that i mean they all say the right things let's let's start with that
37:27
they all say the right things when they come in to give their sales pitch about
37:30
being open about working partners flexibility.
37:33
They will all do that but i think when you approach vendor
37:36
selection as the client you need to understand because a lot of our clients
37:40
are very honest and they're very straight and they and i think they're surprised
37:44
that not all technology vendors are actually being entirely factual with them
37:48
so that's something you've got to go with your eyes wide open what's the red
37:51
flags what comes out what do you look for that's that's number one i think you you you look for,
37:56
And tells on that, that the lies are creeping in are things where we can't show
38:01
you it now. It's on the roadmap.
38:03
Anything that's roadmap. Yeah, roadmap, that's a red flag.
38:07
Oh, I'll just scrap my next question. Let's talk about roadmaps.
38:09
No, obviously the roadmap is super important, but I think it's more about functionality
38:13
that they're trying to say.
38:15
It's critical to you as the client, but it's on the roadmap.
38:18
The other red flag sometimes is, and again, this is personal to a client,
38:23
it's the cultural fit of the organization.
38:24
Yeah some someone you know a technology juggernaut
38:29
that has you know is global with a massive balance sheet and
38:32
that's going to work well from them others want to be a big
38:34
fish in a small pond and i think all all different
38:37
things that culturally matter so you know when i think
38:41
you it's more about it's not about us as woodhurst looking for red red flags
38:46
it's about helping understand what's going to be a red flag for our client and
38:50
then helping them find those and then i wonder as well you know you want to
38:54
probe into how much skin in the game the vendor has for the success of this
38:57
implementation in the market because if you look at the ones that have failed.
39:01
You kind of think well maybe they weren't that invested because woodhurst
39:05
couldn't afford for a client not to have a successful program you
39:08
know we cannot afford that and i know there are technology vendors
39:11
that take the same approach so i'd be really looking for that and it's a red flag
39:14
if if if um it's not to
39:16
say that you can't work with tech vendors that have had you know a failure but
39:19
what what's been what have they done since then what have they learned and
39:22
what are they going to apply moving forward and and also what contractual
39:25
commitments are they making to you to actually
39:28
deliver on what they're promising i think that's super important and
39:31
that sometimes comes out quite late in the day so i think with vendor selections
39:35
have moved on a lot from the old traditional process of sort of sequentially
39:39
going through a written thing a demo a signed contract and then let's try and
39:42
implement you know a modern vendor selection also looks very different now to
39:47
protect the client from these things surface things early um.
39:51
Yeah, no, I agree. I think the cultural fit is really key, but I love this notion
39:56
of equitable partnerships.
39:59
And the skin in the game piece really resonates with me because maybe slightly
40:04
larger players in the market, whether they win or they don't win,
40:08
they can absorb the loss. It doesn't really matter.
40:11
And I've seen it on the other side of the table where you work with a big-named
40:15
SIO, a big-named vendor, and actually, with respect, you kind of get the Z team.
40:21
Right you don't really get the 18 because there's no
40:24
skin in the game so with a fintech s and
40:27
some of the people we're talking about i cannot wait
40:30
for announcements and and go to
40:33
my god to be in because it's it's as important to us it's important to you as
40:39
woodtors and talk to them that this is success and you will live die bleed until
40:45
that's done yeah and and you know we talked about getting the contract sign and getting the,
40:50
getting to be the preferred vendor is one thing.
40:53
Implement it is the next thing. Yeah. Right. So a lot of these implementations
40:58
will go wrong. And you know what? They will go wrong. You know what?
41:02
No, there's never a smooth implementation. There'll always be like kind of ups and downs.
41:07
And I think that goes back to what you said about being able to work with people,
41:11
the honesty piece, the roadmap.
41:13
If you're something, it's something you can't do, but you can show you can do
41:15
it and you're honest about it.
41:18
Then fantastic you build towards that but you know you you you must have seen some.
41:24
You've probably seen the good the bad and the ugly yeah in terms
41:27
of implementations definitely i think we're quite
41:30
now quite well known in the sector for running these
41:32
vendor selections helping clients make difficult decisions around
41:35
technology with you know all the facts we're now
41:39
um involved with a lot of our clients supporting these
41:42
implementations you know we we want skin in the game we don't want to just
41:44
walk away at the point they've selected the new technology provider and we want
41:47
to actually see the business case delivered and we're learning a
41:50
lot and this there's a lot of good lessons to be learned and i
41:53
think some of the what's gone wrong well last
41:56
year actually encouraged us to interview a bunch of people across the
41:59
specialist lending sector about implementations what
42:02
they wish they would have done differently what's worked well yeah so that
42:05
report if you're interested has lots of great sound bites from people
42:08
at the coalface on the client site on this on our
42:11
website on the website yeah on the uh and uh on the woodhurst implementation
42:14
report um so when i thought about
42:17
this often they go wrong before they even
42:20
begin so there's just misaligned expectations the
42:23
vendor thinks that the client fully understands their
42:26
solution okay um which is impossible isn't
42:29
it really because their solution is often vast and highly configurable um
42:33
the client the bank the specialist lender the
42:36
building society thinks that this solution is going to solve
42:39
all their pain points so you're going in with these massively misaligned
42:42
expectations there's been no real honest conversation about are
42:45
you adopting or you're adapting and you know there's a lot of
42:48
heat you know heat thrown on the vendors but equally i think there's some
42:51
heat to be thrown on on the clients to say you know.
42:53
You're kind of telling them that you want to adopt this amazing solution that you
42:56
see delivering amazing benefits elsewhere at your competitors but
43:00
then you've actually got to come to the table being prepared to adopt so there's
43:03
that too but equally you know on the other side i think the vendors sometimes
43:06
paint a picture that you know it's all figured out it doesn't have to be you
43:10
know customized and implemented for them they talk about pre-configured implementations
43:15
integrations this is this is just often just.
43:18
Nonsense and implement integrations is
43:21
a big thing that you could probably have a whole podcast about because
43:24
no one really understands and there's always work to be done sometimes
43:27
there's less work to be done but that really is where
43:30
a lot of these things go wrong because the integrations can't
43:33
be done and how that data flows down exactly um and
43:37
you know i think um it's not
43:40
all about vendor selection um i think you you've
43:43
got to actually really then focus on
43:46
that that point that we've made throughout the
43:49
podcast around finding a partner that's going
43:52
to be credible in the implementation front is open
43:55
to working with partners as well that doesn't use that that
43:58
part of their doesn't turn the professional services part
44:01
of their business into one of their main revenue generators because by
44:05
doing that by being open to working with partners delivery
44:08
partners they're they're taking some accountability that they
44:11
can't sort of point the finger at themselves when things aren't being delivered yeah absolutely
44:14
um but yeah what do you think mark i think i think um i
44:17
think about you guys actually an interesting spot because you're
44:20
with the customer at the very outset where you're almost defining the problem um
44:24
and you're helping them along that journey you're going through a quite a large
44:28
process of looking out into the marketplace finding out who the players are
44:32
and trying to fit that together like a jigsaw puzzle and then you hold the hand
44:36
through the selection process and you know very active within that process when
44:40
they're asking the right questions probing the right things talking about a lot of things here.
44:44
Holding people accountable, talking about roadmaps, actually pinning people down.
44:49
And then why it would be an absolute natural step to then take ownership of
44:56
it and say, actually, you've added so much value from that point to that point. To walk away from.
45:02
Is almost bonkers because you've
45:05
built a relationship and one of the themes of this podcast has
45:08
always been about people and culture about you know people still buying
45:11
people and that expertise and and and experience
45:14
to then take a a leap
45:17
into the actual delivery of it and you so well
45:20
placed to see how things have gone well and gone wrong
45:23
but you've got the relationship and you understand the business through the
45:27
implementation i think you know that would be such a natural step to take into
45:33
build sites and into specialist lenders as well because you've got that you've
45:37
got that that level of know-how yeah that is desperately like and then.
45:42
When you go into an impact, touch your partners, obviously they have to learn
45:45
the technology, they have to relearn all that stuff.
45:50
You've already got some of that. I just think it's just a natural piece that
45:54
you should be doing without kind of self-canalizing.
45:56
I think the position we take with our, let's say our most successful clients
46:04
or the clients that we feel we are adding value to the most is as a transformation partner.
46:10
End-to-end transformation partner from that point of call
46:13
it problem definition or even sort of success metric definition
46:16
right at the outset what is that north star and how do we help you achieve that
46:20
all the way through you know it's not about selecting the
46:23
technology it's not about implementing the technology it's about
46:25
actually achieving your transformation objectives and
46:28
taking you through that whole journey being able to add
46:31
um the insight the expertise
46:34
the capabilities that woodhurst has across that
46:37
end to end um and supplement and support the
46:40
clients and also to the point of skin in the game you
46:43
know making sure we set up commercially for that i again i
46:46
think our most successful commercial engagements are
46:50
based on transformation outcomes not implementation deliverables not um completing
46:56
an rfp within two months or whatever it may be it's on okay you actually want
47:00
to achieve these things what is the extent to which woodhurst can help you achieve
47:04
those things and measure our success on that and measure our commercial sort
47:08
of ability on that as well.
47:10
And that's where I think we see the most success and where we're able to support
47:14
the success of our clients the most. Yeah, definitely.
47:17
Yeah. I think we've talked a lot about building sites today,
47:20
but you say specialist lenders, tier two banks are in exactly the same position. Yeah.
47:25
There is so much innovation and transformation that's required in our industry
47:30
across those segments as...
47:32
As they start to mature and evolve into you
47:35
know a new way of this blend this hybrid approach
47:39
of digital and human and having this
47:41
open ecosystem where you kind of play with
47:45
third parties and you can bring them into the journey and and
47:48
start to normally reduce the cost to
47:50
serve but to drive efficiency into into
47:54
your process and notice i mentioned ai once in
47:57
this piece but until you and once you get that then you've
48:00
got the data structure correct and then you supercharge it with ai um it doesn't
48:05
mean replacing a whole bunch of people but it just makes i keep using the same
48:09
phrase about people have to be comfortable from being doers to being reviewers
48:14
and that's that that'll be the cycle change for me and i think i think you guys would be,
48:19
fantastic in that in that delivery piece and i'm sure we'll um,
48:25
I'm sure you will be successful once you get into that notion.
48:29
Anyway, look, we're coming to now. I'm seeing the clock flashing in the background.
48:33
So we're coming to an end of the podcast. And I always like to finish on a kind
48:38
of an eye on the future. And we've talked about it a lot, to be fair, already.
48:41
So I guess, Ben, I'll turn to you first. So in any game, there's winners and losers, right?
48:46
Yeah. So, what will it take for Tier 2 Specialist Alternative Building Societies
48:54
to be a winner in the next three, five years?
48:58
So, we think the winners in the next three to five years are going to be those
49:02
that have absolutely maxed out on their modernization investment case throughout.
49:07
So they a lot of them are in in a period of
49:11
real big investment to make that big jump
49:14
probably from a legacy place to you know
49:16
modern tech and a modern data framework to support it
49:19
but they won't stop there you know the ones that we're working with who are
49:22
really ambitious yeah they've re-platformed their core into the cloud they've
49:26
put a new front end in but now they're looking at what's next what does that
49:29
enable so they're making similarly large investments in in that so So the winners
49:34
are definitely going to put the pedal to the metal with the investment in modernization.
49:38
Of course, I would say that because we're there to support that.
49:41
But I think that is a view that is backed up by evidence in the performance of these that do.
49:46
The others, the winners will have also exploited their biggest underutilized
49:52
asset at the moment, which is their data.
49:54
So I think it was the head of innovation at the FCA last week when I saw him at talk was saying.
50:00
The every lender in the you know next 10
50:03
years will have modern technology because the ones that won't have
50:06
it will no longer exist so then
50:09
what differentiates you from each other and he was talking
50:11
to a room full of banks and building societies and the
50:14
answer is your data so we're working
50:17
with clients as well now that the modernization isn't just about
50:20
selecting the modern technology but it's about doing the
50:23
work on the data to your point about the ai
50:26
piece won't ever really work until they've got their data in
50:29
a good state so the winners will have addressed that and
50:32
that again we're sort of seeing especially at bigger end
50:35
you've got your programs that are doing sort of
50:38
modern tech replacement you've also actually now
50:41
people calling it out as a data modernization separately and
50:44
at smaller clients they can just be combined into the single program so
50:47
winners will do that and and we'll see the winners will be doing double the
50:52
amount of lending that they're doing today with roughly the same headcount their
50:55
colleagues will be far more empowered doing much more interesting work like
50:58
you say reviewing spending time with the members spending time educating brokers
51:02
on innovative products that's a big thing that's holding people back i hear at the moment which is.
51:07
The complexity of getting across innovative products to a broker, that takes time.
51:11
There's no time to do that because everyone's pushing paper around and dealing
51:14
with the convoluted processes.
51:16
So winners will be doing that. And that's exciting. So I think working for a
51:19
lender is going to be so much more exciting in three to five years as well.
51:23
So we'll see that. And then I didn't want to make it about the losers,
51:26
but losers simply won't be doing that stuff.
51:29
And I think I was speaking to one recently who sort of took the view that,
51:33
well, if I can't do it myself, why should i
51:36
be doing it and i sort of took the comparison with
51:39
with them around well that's a
51:41
question for you know are you going to put insulation in your house and
51:44
modernize your house so that you can get a good energy efficiency rate
51:47
rating and enjoy living there or do you you know you don't
51:50
you don't have to become the world's best diy you you can work
51:53
with the right tech vendor partners and the
51:56
right other partners i think the winners will be
51:58
doing that because regardless of the size of your
52:01
organization if you're big you can work with more partners a
52:04
bigger skin if you're small you'll you'll pick your partners but
52:07
we're already seeing the ones that having more success with their
52:10
modernization that they've they've picked really good partners with skin in
52:13
the game and they're contributing a lot they're not doing it on their own great
52:17
answer great answer and josh i'm going to give you the last word yeah this is
52:21
no pressure but this is what everybody's going to hone in on this is your advice
52:25
yeah what would be your advice for i guess.
52:29
What would make a successful transformation in 2026?
52:33
That is an outrageous amount of pressure, isn't it? It is, yeah.
52:37
It's just a small question. It's going to be a bit better to you to answer this
52:41
one. I can't even respond and just say, great, either.
52:45
No, what would make a successful transformation? Ben's mentioned a number of things.
52:51
I think for me, it comes back to the point of.
52:54
We said earlier, it's a very fragmented market, sort of the lending space,
53:00
specialist lending space across all of those different players that you mentioned,
53:03
sub-sectors that you mentioned. So it's a very competitive market.
53:06
So for me, I think the starting point has to be work out what it is that you want to achieve,
53:11
work out what it is that you are known for and incredibly good at,
53:14
because there are so many different flavors of lending,
53:18
specialist lending, products etc double down
53:21
on that and understand what are those strategically placed
53:25
investments that you can make to actually push that
53:28
ambition forward so where do you start chunking
53:32
up the elephant where do you start eating the elephant and drive
53:35
down that list in a sort of strategic systematic
53:38
very considered way but giving yourself the flexibility
53:41
to change along the journey if you need to
53:44
to course correct and work with
53:47
the right internal people the right partners
53:50
free up the right capacity across your team the right
53:53
capability across your team to actually enable that success
53:55
but for me it all starts at that what's our
53:58
strategic intent what do we want to be known for and then
54:01
really focusing through on what do we need to do to achieve that if
54:05
you go in with a considered plan you are
54:08
so much more likely to be successful if you go in
54:11
half-baked slightly uncertain following the
54:14
herd not really clear on what your competitive advantage is it's so much harder
54:18
to be successful every single time and if you're not sure what it then takes
54:21
to achieve what you're trying to do then yeah you're just set up for failure
54:25
yeah well look if uh any listeners or viewers uh need help with coming up with that plan.
54:32
Come visit the website of Woodhurst Consolidant. Look up Ben, look up Josh.
54:37
You've listened to their wise words today. We've reached the end.
54:41
I want to just thank you both for your time and your considered opinions today.
54:46
Thank you for the partnership we've had over the last 12, 80 months.
54:50
I think we're going to burst some great success out of that.
54:52
I can't wait for some news to hit the market in that regard.
54:57
And here's to 2026 and hopefully some additional successes together.
55:03
Thank you both very much. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Cheers.