312 cases died last year.You were paid for none of them.
A broker earns nothing until completion. Ashvale Financial started 1,904 cases and completed 1,592 — the other 312 absorbed roughly 4,400 adviser and administrator hours and £284,000 of income that was never earned. Forty-four died for the same avoidable reason: the mortgage offer expired while everyone waited for somebody else. Mortgage broking is a business where the software either owns the chase, or the case quietly stops moving.
We built the screens that make it stop — every one of them live and clickable below. Then we build the same for your firm, with no commitment: the screens your team would use, in your stages and your brand, linked up so you can walk your own process through them. Open it, show your team — if it's a fit, we'll make a detailed, priced proposal.
The losses are already on the calendar
None of this needs new staff, new lenders or new products. It needs the dates that already exist in every case file to drive the work — instead of waiting for someone to remember them.
Ashvale Financial does not exist. We cannot show live client systems, so this study is built around a fictional brokerage — invented firm, invented advisers, invented clients, invented figures. What is not invented is the work: the case lifecycle, the regulatory obligations, the supervisory duties and the failure modes are all real, and the screens are genuine working pages rather than pictures of pages. Every mockup on this page opens and responds to clicks.
What this is not: a mortgage platform. It does not source products, show live rates or submit applications to lenders, and it is not something a network rolls out to thousands of advisers. The established case-management platforms already do that job, and displacing one is a far larger undertaking than this. Your sourcing system, your lender portals and your compliance process all stay exactly where they are.
What it is: the layer none of those tools owns — the dates that cost money, the chase across five parties, the protection conversation that has to happen before completion, and the file review the firm owes itself each quarter. Built for one firm on an engine already running in five other sectors, so the eight weeks go into your case core instead of rebuilding what works. Where a tool already does its job — your CRM, your document store, your commission system — we integrate with it rather than replace it.
On scope: Ashvale is modelled as a directly authorised firm, which means nobody else is checking its work. An appointed representative has a principal pulling files, chasing returns and saying when something has slipped; a directly authorised firm has only the controls it builds for itself, and the first external eyes on a file may arrive with a complaint attached. An appointed representative would need the same case engine with a network layer on top — that is a different study.
On the other lines: almost no UK firm advises on mortgages and nothing else — of the directly authorised firms holding mortgage advice permission, 95% also advise on investments and 87% also carry out credit broking. Ashvale is mortgage-led and also writes protection, which is the commonest shape. If investments and pensions are the larger half of your business, the multi-line advice blueprint is the better starting point — same engine, different centre of gravity.
A brokerage that grew faster than anyone's ability to see it
Ashvale writes mortgages and protection from three offices in Yorkshire. Fourteen advisers, six case administrators, a good reputation and a healthy pipeline — roughly a third purchases, with remortgages and product transfers making up the rest. What it does not have is any way of knowing which of its 148 live cases needs a human today — so the ones that need one quietly do not get one.
- Advisers
- 14
- Case administrators
- 6
- Offices
- 3
- Clients on the books
- 4,127
- Cases started, 12 months
- 1,904
- Cases completed
- 1,592
- — purchases
- 540
- — remortgages
- 620
- — product transfers
- 432
- Lending completed
- £310m
- Average procuration fee
- £658
- Protection attach rate
- 28%
- Rates ending in 6 months
- 690
- Current systems
- 5 + spreadsheets
Nine failures, and what each one actually costs
None of these is exotic. Every one of them is how a busy brokerage loses money it has already done the work to earn.
One record per client, and a clock on every date that costs money
Two ideas, the same two that hold up any good operational system — and they pull five internal tools and a spreadsheet into one application, connected to the systems you keep.
Seven years, four cases, the cover they hold and the rate that ends in 2031 all sit in one place — so an adviser who has never met them can pick up the phone informed.
The offer expiry, the rate expiry, the file review deadline, the completion with no protection conversation behind it — the task lands before the date becomes a problem.
Adviser first; the director at thirty days from expiry. Nothing waits for somebody to remember it, and nothing expires in silence.
Eight screens. Every one of them real.
No screenshots, no slideware — each screen below is a working page, rendered live in its frame. Click a frame or its link to open the full screen in a new tab and use it.
Pipeline overview
The view a managing director actually needs: not how many cases are open, but which ones need a person today and what it costs if nobody goes near them. Cases by stage with the stalled count beside each, where cases died over the last year, how long each lender is really taking in underwriting against its own published service level, and a ranked list ordered by money at risk rather than by date raised.
Onboarding & KYC
The pipeline screen begins at fact find. This one begins earlier, at the part nobody watches. Thirty-four cases are in onboarding, forty-one documents are outstanding, and eleven cases have not moved in five days or more — each one stalled on a named person, which is the only fact that gets it moving.
It matters because the delay does not stay at the front. Of the 44 offers that expired before completion last year, 17 had already lost a fortnight before the application was submitted — £18,326 of the £47,400. Nobody was late at the end; everybody was late at the beginning.
Case timeline & offer clock
The screen this study is built around. Five stages from fact find to completion, with the mortgage offer expiry running underneath all of them. When a case stalls it names the party responsible — and on this case that party is the seller's managing agent, three steps removed from the broker, which is exactly why nobody was chasing it. Leasehold management packs are tracked as their own blocker type, because they are the most common reason a purchase dies at legals: 31 of Ashvale's live cases are leasehold and 9 are waiting on a pack.
It also prices the consequence. If this offer lapses the clients re-apply at roughly £61 a month more, and the firm loses the £1,667 of procuration fee and protection commission it has already done eighteen hours of work for. That number is what turns a polite chase into a firm one.
Client record
Seven years of a household in one place: both incomes with the evidence behind them, the affordability calculation and how close it runs to the lender's cap, every policy they hold including the ones Ashvale did not sell, and a timeline that shows the two opportunities the firm missed in hindsight.
Protection & the gap
Attach rate by adviser, the completions coming up with no recorded conversation, and — the part that matters — a breakdown of who those clients are. Thirty-three of the sixty-one are sole earners or self-employed with dependants. The same screen tracks clawback exposure at the other end — the policies signalling a lapse before the provider statement arrives.
Deliberately not a sales dashboard. A client who is offered cover, understands it and declines is a good outcome and closes the case cleanly. A client who was never asked is a revenue gap and a regulatory question at the same time. What the system counts is conversations recorded, not policies sold.
The back book
Every client the firm has ever completed for, sorted by the date their rate ends. Outreach starts at six months automatically, escalates from email to a call at four, and hands to a named adviser at three — because by the time the lender's retention letter lands, the conversation is already lost.
Compliance & supervision
The screen a directly authorised firm needs most, because it is the only supervision there is. An appointed representative has a principal pulling files and chasing answers; Ashvale holds its own permissions, so every file review below is one it scheduled for itself against a deadline it set itself — and two of the eight are already overdue.
Six of the seven items in a file pack assemble themselves from the case record. The seventh is the adviser explaining their thinking, which is the only part a system should not write. Alongside it sits training and competence, CPD, and the Consumer Duty evidence the board has to attest to once a year — produced from the case records rather than assembled in the fortnight before the meeting.
Client portal
A second audience, so a second interface. The same case clock rewritten in plain English, including the part most brokers avoid saying out loud: what is actually holding things up, whose fault it is not, and why the deadline matters. Documents are uploaded once and reused, and the client can see everything the firm has done on their behalf.
Not a dashboard. An operator.
Five internal tools and a spreadsheet become one application that chases the work the way a good senior administrator would — only it never forgets, never takes a holiday, and never waits to be asked. What the firm gets back is the point:
Every case has an owner by default
A case that goes ten days without movement raises itself; at thirty days from expiry it lands on the director's list whether or not anyone has touched it. The hours that used to go to remembering go to the clients.
Money ranks the work
The pipeline orders cases by money at risk, not by date raised — the chase goes first to the case that costs the most, and attention follows the money instead of the last email.
Offers stop expiring in silence
The date that killed 44 cases becomes a clock with an owner and a price on it. £1,078 behind a deadline, on average, is a firmer tone than a reminder — and the clients keep the rate they were offered.
Protection becomes a conversation, not a hope
Completions with no recorded conversation are flagged before completion. The system counts conversations had, not policies sold — so the asking happens once, deliberately, and the case closes cleanly.
The back book works itself
4,127 past clients, each with a rate-end date. The sequence runs itself — outreach at six months, a call at four, a named adviser at three — so the adviser's time goes into the calls, not finding them.
Supervision stops being a fire drill
Six of seven file-pack items assemble themselves from the case record; the adviser writes the one part a system should not — their thinking. Reviewing a file stops costing anything, so reviews actually happen.
The chase first, because that is what is bleeding
Four phases of two weeks each — eight weeks end to end. The case engine and the offer clock go live first, because every week they are not live is another case expiring quietly. Revenue work follows once the pipeline is trustworthy. Each phase ends with something the team actually uses, not a demo.
Discovery & data
- Migrate clients, cases and policies
- Connect the sourcing, CRM and provider tools you keep
- Map the file review and reporting requirements
- Fee and commission model, including clawback
- Agree what "stalled" means at each stage
The case engine
- Case timeline and offer expiry clock
- Chase log across all five parties
- Document collection and reuse
- Escalation rules to adviser and director
Revenue
- Protection outcomes, required before completion
- Back book and rate expiry sequences
- Retention reporting by adviser and office
- Client record and lifetime view
Oversight & rollout
- File packs assembled for review
- Training, competence and CPD tracking
- Consumer Duty outcomes and quarterly return
- Client portal, pilot office first
Eight weeks is possible because most of it already exists. The engine underneath — the client and case records, document handling, approval limits, escalation rules, the portal — is running in production across five sectors already. What actually gets built for a brokerage is the case core: the offer clock, the chase across five parties, the protection outcome gate, and whatever your own file review requires in a pack. That is the part this study is about, and it is the part we would spend the eight weeks getting right.
The engine underneath is already in production
The difficult parts of this system exist and run today — they are just doing it for other sectors. Live platforms, with the same client and case records, document handling, approval limits, escalation rules and portal at the centre of each:
- Medical tourism
- Student management
- Retrofit & remediation
- Financial brokerage
- Property management
That is why the working mockup is a realistic offer: we are not sketching a new product to sell you, we are showing you what the existing one would look like with your stages, your lenders and your brand on it — before any build begins.
What is real here, and what is not
Real
- The case lifecycle, the offer expiry problem, and the way cases die at legals
- The obligations of a directly authorised firm — its own file review programme, training and competence, the Consumer Duty attestation and regulatory reporting
- The failure modes. All nine are drawn from how brokerages actually run
- The screens themselves: working HTML, not images, built the way we build the real thing
- Our track record. Sentient has built systems of this shape for medical tourism, student management, retrofit and remediation, financial brokerage and property management — live platforms across five sectors
Not real
- Ashvale Financial, its advisers, its lenders and its clients. All invented
- Every figure on every screen. The numbers are constructed to be plausible, not measured
- The outcomes. Every hour, pound and percentage on this page is an estimate constructed for the fictional firm — it illustrates the mechanism, and is not a measured result from any client
- Any resemblance to a client. We do not show live client systems, which is precisely why this study exists
We would rather show you your own screens
This took a fictional brokerage and made its process visible. The same exercise works better with a real one — your language, your stages, your brand, your lenders — and it costs you nothing to find out whether it is worth building.
A conversation about your stages, your panel, your protection and referral lines, and where the money leaks.
A working mockup of your pipeline — clickable, in your language and your brand.
Click through it with your team. If it's a fit, we'll come back with a detailed, priced proposal. If not, we part on good terms.
Ready to see your own pipeline running like this?
Tell us how your brokerage actually runs — your stages, your lenders, your protection and referral lines, where the money leaks — and we'll show you how we'd build it. If it's a fit, we build your screens. No commitment — and a detailed, priced proposal only if you ask for one.
What happens next
- We reply within one working day — a person who has read your note, not a bot.
- If it's a fit, we build your mockup — the screens above, re-skinned to your stages, your lenders and your brand.
- You click through it before anyone commits — if it earns the build, we talk about that.
Every enquiry is confidential — we never share your details, and we never put client work on a website.
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