1087. Insights: Can anyone fix homebuying?

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1:10Hello and welcome to Fintech Insider Insights. I'm Benjamin Ensor, Director of Research and Strategy at 11FS. Today we're exploring one of the biggest, most emotional and most expensive financial journeys most people ever undertake, buying a home. Now we've been talking about fixing home buying for years. Property searches have moved online, mortgage applications have become digital, and buyers have access to more information than ever before. Yet, wherever you are in the world, the experience can often still feel broken. A few years ago, we published a report about home buying, and we identified three recurring themes, complexity, a lack of transparency, and poor orchestration.

1:53And so while the technology has continued to advance, many of those underlying challenges still remain. Buyers are still left acting as a project manager, chasing updates, and keeping the process moving between multiple providers. So today, we're going to ask what's changed, what still isn't working, and where can technologies like AI and better collaboration across the ecosystem make a big difference? So to discuss this, I'm joined by three fabulous guests. First of all, I'd love to welcome Maria Harris, Chair of the Open Property Data Association and an advisor. Maria, welcome back to the show.

2:32Please can you remind listeners who've not come across you before a little bit about who you are and what you do. Lovely to be back, Benjamin. Thanks for having me back on. So yes, Maria Harris, Founder and Chair of the OPD, which was a job that I fell into entirely by accident. And most people probably remember me from my work in mortgage lending, and been in mortgages for the last 20 years and was part of the team who built Atom Bank, which was the UK's first digital bank and the first digital mortgage. Fabulous. Welcome back. I'm also delighted to welcome Daniel O 'Connor, Chief Operating Officer of LendInvest.

3:09Welcome to the show, Daniel. Please, could you also tell our listeners a little bit about you and a little bit about LendInvest? Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me on, Benjamin. I've spent 20 years in financial services, predominantly in full-service banks in the UK and then laterally in fintech. As you said, I'm CEO at LendInvest. We are a listed UK property finance platform that aims to bring together specialist expertise and technology to make property finance simpler. We've lent over£9 billion on the platform since inception in 2008. and that's in what we today define in the market as specialist mortgages but we might get into that later in the conversation today.

3:55So that's predominantly buy-to-let lending, residential, bridging and development finance. My job here is essentially making sure the operating platform runs effectively, the technology, the processes and the people that enable us to lend to those that are looking to buy a home or remortgage as well as supporting them through the life cycle. So for the last few years, we've been working hard, as many have been, on making that journey simpler and faster where possible for customers and broker partners that we engage with. But looking forward to the conversation today and to some of the constraints that remain in the market and how that needs to continue to evolve at pace at an industry level.

4:34Fabulous. Thank you for joining us. And I'm also delighted to welcome Lucy Wayment, co-founder of Wellness. Yes. Fantastic to have you joining us today, Lucy. Could you also tell our listeners a little bit about you and a little bit about wellness? Yes, of course. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be part of this conversation. So I'm Lucy. I'm one of the co-founders of Wellness. We are on a mission to make financial advice affordable and accessible for women for the first time. And we look at finances holistically. So that includes mortgage and home, as well as protection, pensions, investing, legacy.

5:12And we're using AI to automate a lot of the compliance and admin that makes advice so expensive to deliver at the moment so that we can make it more accessible to more women. Elle is our proprietary AI. She helps women understand their gaps with their financial score. and she can help them build confidence and then connect them with a female advisor when the time's right. Amazing. Thank you. Okay, so let's dive in and let's start with why buying a home is still so painful in many parts of the world. As I said before, it's one of the biggest financial decisions most of us ever make. It's also one of the most emotional.

5:53and yet despite years of digital innovation, many buyers still describe the process as confusing, stressful, financially overwhelming. When we asked you, our audience, to sum up the home buying journey in one word, your responses ranged from mind-boggling and expensive to builder-centric, migraine, soul-destroying, and even Ponzi. So what still isn't working? Daniel, let's maybe come to you first You know, we've seen a lot of development over the past couple of decades We've seen fintech addressing all sorts of problems And yet home buying still feels quite difficult in many parts of the world Why do you think it's still so hard?

6:43It's quite the tee-up, isn't it? And quite the indictment And I think actually, Maria, on the last time you were on the show, you were talking about how I think the survey was that the only worst experience in a journey was a bereavement journey and then second behind that, buying a home. So certainly nothing to be proud of in that regard. I think ultimately it's no secret. The system is incredibly fragmented end to end and that's not a very easy thing that can be solved overnight and Maria will definitely be the best place to talk about the work that's been done on how we try and remove some of that fragmentation that exists.

7:29But maybe if I frame, you touched on the 11FS home buying report previously and maybe if I frame it back in the same way, you touched on transparency. I do actually think that genuine progress has been made on transparency across the market. I think portals from a customer and from an intermediary point of view are a lot better. And I think that's reflective of wider digital evolution across all financial services, not just in home buying. And I think, again, the work that OPD are doing will continue to improve that. But when we talk about the inherent complexity and the end-to-end journey, I think that has got better inside individual firms.

8:16I'm not sure I could say that it's got better between firms. I think we can see the path to that improving, but I'm not sure considerable progress has been made on that necessarily. And then the third point that you touched on was orchestration, and that's the bit that I think is maybe being a bit harsh, almost untouched in reality and it is the bit that needs to make the biggest difference across the market and that's why we still have things like timelines to complete being an average of four months and fall through rates of one in three, although I have seen different stats on that but they're all higher than one in three so I think it's perhaps so broken that people in the industry can't agree on how broken it is but it's at least one in three, if not more in terms of a fall-through rate.

9:06So that's, I think, the honest assessment. That's maybe 1.5 out of the three in terms of progress that's been made. But we are describing here, it's not one customer opening one account with one firm. We're talking about year six plus different parties all playing different roles in an inherently fragmented journey. So I don't think that's something that we are going to come back together in a few months' time and is going to be resolved. But I think as we'll get on to later in the conversation, there is certainly, I'm more positive, a lot more positive about what the outlook looks like and the opportunities that presents.

9:45But we'll come to that next, I'm sure. Fabulous. Maria, there's a clue in the name of the Open Property Data Association. But what do you see as some of the challenges and some of the ways we might go about fixing them? and yes and and I completely agree I mean some of the words that people have used to describe us so emotional as they should be and buying a home is and not only just you know an important and kind of life-changing moment and but it generally comes at the same time as you're doing something else that is life-changing and emotional we tend to move house because we are moving for work or we're moving out of our parents or we finished uni or we're moving in with a partner or we've broken up with a partner or you know there's lots of kind of life events that drive usually moving a property.

10:30And so yeah, it tends to be an emotional time and then an emotional process on top of an emotional time. So I'm not surprised that people describe it that way, but it is a horrendous endorsement for the industry that that's how people feel about it. And it's getting worse, not better. So fundamentally very broken. And yes, lots of very good reasons that I'm sure none of it was deliberate. That has not happened by design. but what you do have are lots of industries who work on a transaction and those industries are not designed to work together they're very siloed they have their own regulators they have their own compliance their own conduct risk their own ways of working their own culture and their own ways of doing things that are not that don't align around the customer or the customer's experience and it's really interesting when you do look at how it's done in different jurisdictions where we have everything from home buying being a very legally binding upfront way of working in certain countries where you can't make a mortgage offer or you can't make an offer on a property without that being a binding contract to the UK where you have the exact opposite and anybody can drop out at any moment in the transaction with no repercussions whatsoever and that there's no consistent way of buying a house anywhere in the world and it's not consistent in countries and it's not consistent across countries and I think customers really feel the pain of that it's um yeah it's it's an awful process and one that desperately needs fixing so just as a quick side note to international listeners the UK actually has two arguably three different systems so there's a legal system in England and Wales which doesn't work particularly well.

12:14There's a legal system in Scotland that works better, and many Scots would argue works better all around. And there's also an auction system, which provides a third alternative. And the reason this matters is, in each of those systems, when the contract is binding, happens at a different point. And that obviously feeds into the experience. I just want to clarify that. But Lucy, what's your view on the pain of buying a mortgage and the progress we have or haven't made in terms of making it better? Yeah, I mean, I guess I can echo a lot of what's already been said. But I think, you know, there has been positive steps made forward.

12:54I think, you know, things like digital ID checks have really been a game changer. My co-founder literally had to go to a solicitor's office this week in person to validate her passport, which just feels, you know, crazy, doesn't it, in this day and age. And I think, you know, there's new things that are in place that are making a big difference, but they're not consistent across all these different touch points, as has been mentioned. I think, you know, the conveyancing process itself, particularly in the UK, is, you know, where it's so fragmented and there's just so many dependencies on these different parties.

13:28And, you know, I think a lot of that emotive... response comes from the uncertainty that's such a big part of the home buying process you know in England at least where you just never know if it's going to fall through you feel so unable to get a quick answer and yes there are digital journeys now that sit alongside the kind of manual process but I think they haven't completely replaced it they're sort of sitting as a layer on top and there's still a lot of gaps where there's still so much uncertainty. You know, so I think there has been progress. I think this felt like quite a depressing beginning.

14:09I do think that there has been progress. But I think like, you know, like Daniel said, it's so many touch points to look at. It's quite fragmented. There's lots of different regulations, as you mentioned, Maria. So it's not something that can be fixed with one great streamlined journey. we've got to find a way to, you know, connect all these different sources. So there's still a lot of way to go. Daniel, I always think sometimes one of the challenges here is that people are looking for sort of technology solutions to what's essentially a legal problem. I mean, one of the reasons it's so bad in England and Wales is that those offers you make, as Siddha Maria was talking about earlier, you know, are not binding until right at the end of the process.

14:54Scotland's process is much better. The auction process is better because it's binding much earlier. But it's also that point you were making, Daniel, about the sort of orchestration and the sheer number of parties involved. So it's part of the issue here that this isn't really a technology problem per se. It's a sort of legal problem. It's an orchestration problem. And also maybe to the point that Lucy was sort of starting to drive out that actually nobody's really got the buyer's interests in mind. everybody's got their own piece of the pie and their own piece of the puzzle they're trying to worry about but nobody's sort of looking at the whole picture for the customer Yeah I think Maria touched on that earlier everybody is seeing it as a transaction and nobody is seeing it as helping the customer buy a home which is ultimately what they're looking for and just for the record I think Scots Law you're right it's better in some ways I think there are lots of other anomalies and ways that make I think Scots Law channel in its own right and I think the offers over system in Scotland and brings its own challenges as well.

15:56But you're right, I think having those different dynamics in the UK alone actually just brings unnecessary complexity in its own right to have to navigate. I think technology, I think your point's right, is it a technology challenge? I think technology can absolutely help us solve this. I often think, sadly, in technology terms, I think of the customer as being the integration layer. effectively the customer is the only common denominator that exists at all points throughout the whole transaction and that's a big part of the problem is that no one is seeing it all and many parts of that journey aren't connected or as Maria is going to solve for us all is the lack of consistency even in terminology or definitions of data points that are used so even when you do connect them together they don't automatically join and so you're unlikely to get to that outcome.

16:56So I think the standards before then technology can become a solution but I think a lot of it is ways of working like you described. I mean I often within our own organisation or the ones that I've worked in you sort of get that same in large banks or large organisations that same sort of silo based thinking and you'll get parts of the business that are sort of high-fiving that they are providing great service within their own functional boundaries. But actually, when you look at that horizontally, there is nothing to be high-fived about in terms of the actual customer outcomes or the overall service provision.

17:34So I think that's true within organisations, but I think when you zoom out from that and you look at it as a home buying experience end-to-end, I think it's the same analogy that can be applied to that. Everyone is doing what they can to sort of automate and make things simpler within their own boundaries. But in reality, we've continued to make, to speed up the fastest part of what is ultimately a slow process, overall, end to end. Maria, what do you think of that? Do you think we can make progress on that sort of orchestration? Can the industry as a whole, or the different components of the industry as a whole, sort of start reducing some of that pain for customers, start becoming better integrated?

18:16Yeah, it's a great question. And Daniel's absolutely right. Technology is not the problem. The technology to solve this exists. The behaviour change and the hearts and minds change to redesign a process around a consumer experience doesn't exist. But there are some other challenges and some of those challenges are very fundamental. And this one is fairly unique to the UK. So the UK has a data challenge in that our property data is not digitized at source. It's not available to the consumer. The consumer can't easily access their data and they can't easily share their data. Lucy's example of a digital ID and still having to go into a solicitor's office with a physical copy of your passport to go, yes, this is me looking at this face matches as if, you know, the passport office has a border control person in every lawyer's office who can validate that that's the right decision.

19:12and that kind of infrastructure and lack of data is a real challenge but also we don't have trust mechanisms in the UK for sharing this data so even if the consumer could access their own land registry record they have no way of sharing it and proving that it came from land registry and that it can be trusted by all of the other parties in the chain and that's one of the things that we need to solve to make this better and other countries have done this there's some really great examples of places like Norway where their land registry worked with their mortgage lender community and they invested in digitizing the land registry and made it free and open source to everyone.

19:52Complete game changer, absolute game changer. We're seeing it happen in the UAE where they're using distributed ledger and they are tokenizing property records and making it really easy to safely securely share your ID and your data and your property relationship all in one way through a wallet and to be able to share that then with a mortgage lender or a real estate agent or the conveyancing process. So there are great examples around the world of technology already being in place to fix this. Part of our challenge though is we needed political will to get this done and that political backing has been delivered.

20:34We have primary legislation that was delivered to make this happen and that legislation was delivered in June 2025 and now we have a Ministry of Housing roadmap that says we are going to transform this programme, we are going to make home buying better and digitised and they have set out some very clear objectives in terms of mandating digital property packs, property log books, making this data available in a really good structured format and putting the trust framework mechanism in place to make that happen, much as we did for open banking. And open banking's been live for such a long time and is now doing millions and millions of transactions.

21:14So yeah, definitely not a tech problem, but some core infrastructure challenges that we have the ability to fix. Lucy, I'd love to bring you in on this orchestration issue. Because if you're selling a home, you have an estate agent, a realtor, a real estate agent, call it what you will, in different countries, but you have someone who's working for you, at least in theory, to sell your house. But if you're buying a house, well, the estate agent might be trying to offload certain properties in their portfolio to you, but they're not really working for you. And there's not really anybody who's on your side.

21:48I mean, your solicitor, your lawyer works for you, but they're not very good part of your business. I mean, who could or should maybe orchestrate that customer journey? Is the problem that there just isn't a business opportunity there? Yeah, it's difficult. I think that really hits an hour on the head as to how you feel as a consumer. You feel like there's no one that's got your pure best interests at heart. And especially when there's different people within a chain and, you know, there's added complications of, you know, everyone having slightly different desired outcomes of how the situation is going to play out.

22:23So I think that is how you feel. You feel incredibly frustrated that there's not one touch point where you can actually speak to someone and get an answer. You know, often, especially with solicitors, it's not that easy to just, you know, contact them directly or, you know, yeah, like you say, your estate agent's working for different people. In terms of who could own that kind of end to end, And I do think, you know, technology and AI is enabling us to plug kind of knowledge gaps. And I think one of the issues around why homebuying feels kind of really complex for lots of people is there's so much that they don't understand and they don't, you know, realize there's a real lot of jargon that still exists.

23:07There's lots of costs that people aren't aware of up front. And so I think, you know, some of it comes from what feels so stressful is when you don't fully understand what's happening or why and what that means for you practically. So I think if we could find a way to wrap, you know, and that's kind of how we're building wellness is we see AI guidance as a kind of top layer to help, you know, bridge this financial literacy gap, be it mortgages or be it, you know, a whole other range of things within your financial literacy. but then we still see a human in the loop because I think you still need that person that you can speak to and that can know the nuances of the situation and um but yeah so I think you know perhaps the way that we're moving we can use a kind of use the technology progression use AI as a kind of guidance layer to fill some of these unknowns and these gaps of how the process actually looks and works but we still need someone I think that's a touch point who really is the consumer champion in that process.

24:08And, you know, we see that it could be a financial advisor. I think lots of people don't think of going to a financial advisor for a mortgage. They will go specific to a mortgage broker. But what a financial advisor has that a mortgage broker doesn't have is that bigger picture of what else is going on in your life and those other elements that might contribute to how your mortgage application plays out. So I think, you know, someone who can get visibility across that whole journey and be available is it would be a great person to own this process how practical that is I'm not sure but that's the kind of ideal I think.

24:44Yeah I was just going to agree on the consumer having control and understanding and having a safe place to go and to ask questions and mortgage intermediaries do a great job of managing all of that for consumers today, which is why we see such a huge proportion of the market comes through the intermediary channel. But the technology will help them too, because when we've got this right, we'll actually free up their time to be able to have those very human conversations about dreams, aspirations, challenges, what's stressing people out and to help take some of that away. So there's absolutely a human element to this, but the technology will unlock quite a lot of it.

25:23Daniel, just briefly, I was just going to follow up with you on sort of Lucy's question about, you know, is this practical? I mean, from what Lucy's saying, it's potentially a sort of missed opportunity by some of the sort of mortgage brokers, financial advisors and other intermediaries to sort of step up into that role of customer advisor. And I'm not suggesting it's easy to do that. Is there an opportunity there or is the actual, the home buying advisor of the future Claude or Gemini or indeed Wellness's L? Well, no, I mean, the way that I see it is, and I know this might be counterintuitive to a lot of the rhetoric, but I think AI can be the enabler of human empathy, not the bit that takes it all away.

26:04And as you're implying, a broker doesn't need to spend all the time worrying about what the next form is that needs to be filled in or comparing between lenders and engaging with different development managers across different lenders, but can actually focus on the needs of the customer there and predicting what their next needs might be. And I think, I mean, I've seen some stats recently that people are turning to Claude and ChatGPT and others already for advice. And I don't think, I mean, with all the various warnings around that, I think if people have got their eyes wide open, And I think for a lot of people with perhaps straightforward circumstances, that isn't necessarily a bad idea.

26:51But I think this is an opportunity, as I see it. I think the mortgage broker is the closest to the customer to be able to step into that. And it'll be interesting. I mean, it'll be interesting to also see which lenders might want to start to use this as an opportunity, especially, again, back to the work that's going to set data standards and try and drive up improved interoperability between different players, whether actually lenders, etc., see that as an opportunity to step into the front end. I think some might find that attractive, some might not, but I think mortgage brokers are well-placed today to utilise the technology, to spend less time on the administrative side of the role today and with the time that that frees up, spend more of that time stepping into parts being that concierge or that guidance for a customer through a full transaction, but armed with capability that would allow them to join up the different parts of the experience because the technology is underpinning that.

27:56After we've got all the frameworks and everything that are delivered on that, obviously there's still a lot to do on all of that, but that's, I think, why I'm quite optimistic that you can start to see the different pieces coming together here from data standards to the rails in terms of APIs and even potentially blockchain playing a part in that. And then with the overlay of AI, you can start to see how you could start to create some 21st century experiences in the home buying journey. Thank you. Let's take a quick break here and we will be back very shortly.

28:34This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace And there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

29:20Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+.