Fictional client
Fictional client
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 will build the same for your firm: a working mockup of your own pipeline, in your stages and your brand, before you commit to a build.
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 network relationship 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.
On scope: Ashvale is modelled as an appointed representative of a network rather than a directly authorised firm, because that is the more common structure and it puts a second supervisor — the principal — inside the everyday workflow. A directly authorised firm would need the same case engine and a different oversight layer.
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.
None of these is exotic. Every one of them is how a busy brokerage loses money it has already done the work to earn.
Two ideas, the same two that hold up any good operational system — and they replace five tools and a spreadsheet with one application.
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 check 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.
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.
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.
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 £1,667 it has already done eighteen hours of work for. That number is what turns a polite chase into a firm one.
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.
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.
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.
The screen an appointed representative needs and a directly authorised firm does not. The principal is accountable to the regulator for what Ashvale's advisers do, which makes it a second and much closer supervisor: it selects files, sets deadlines, grades the firm, and increases the checks when answers come late.
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 measures the network asks for each quarter.
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.
Five systems 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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Six of seven file-pack items assemble themselves from the case record; the adviser writes the one part a system should not — their thinking. The grading stops slipping on files that were complete but unsent.
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.
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 the network requires in a file pack. That is the part this study is about, and it is the part we would spend the eight weeks getting right.
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:
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.
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 you see it working before you commit to anything.
A conversation about your stages, your panel, your network and where the money leaks.
A working mockup of your pipeline — clickable, in your language and your brand.
Click through it. If it earns the build, we talk about that. If not, you keep the mockup.
Tell us how your brokerage actually runs — your stages, your lenders, your network, where the money leaks — and we'll show you how we'd build it. If it's a fit, a working mockup of your own screens follows, before anyone commits to anything.
Every enquiry is confidential — we never share your details, and we never put client work on a website.
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