Andrew Lloyd is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Fignum. He was appointed to the role in October 2024 to lead the business, which specialises in loan origination and servicing for mortgages and motor finance. Mortgage Soup caught up with him to find out more and to get his take on the direction of travel for mortgage technology.
You joined Fignum from PEXA and other major institutions – what specific experiences prepared you to lead a fintech in the UK mortgage space?
For me, it feels like the natural culmination of my career to date. I started out in consulting with a financial services focus, then completed my MBA and moved into strategy roles. From there, I worked with a number of challenger banks and technology providers across the financial services market, including launching new mortgage products.
I’ve always been passionate about fintech, so the opportunity to join PEXA and lead their commercial function in the early years was hugely exciting. Working in an organisation of that size and scale, trying to make a real difference in the UK market, was a fantastic experience.
After that, I spoke to Alistair Jeffery, Peter McGuiness and the board at Fignum. They said, “Why don’t you come on board and lead the next phase of Fignum’s growth?” That felt like too good an opportunity to miss — so here I am.
What is your long-term vision for Fignum in the UK mortgage market, and how has that evolved since you took the helm?
I was always very clear that there’s an underserved segment in the mortgage market from a technology perspective — where lending is more esoteric, more niche, and requires far greater flexibility from its technology.
When I looked at what the team at Fignum had built, it met that need head-on. One of my priorities has been to stay laser-focused on that space. We’re not about mass-market, high-volume, vanilla lending. We’re about the slightly different cases — the ones that are a bit gnarly, where lenders need flexibility in both process and technology.
That mindset applies not just to the platform, but to our people and our ways of working too. We’re pragmatists at heart. The aim is always to get things done quickly and effectively, with minimum fuss, so our clients can focus on lending.
How do you balance the demands of innovation with the risk-averse nature of financial services regulation?
That’s where our pragmatic approach really comes into play. We’re constantly scanning the horizon and asking what’s coming next and how it might apply to us as a business, our clients, their business partners and borrowers.
Right now, there’s a lot of focus on AI, particularly agentic AI. But for us, it’s not about rolling that straight out to customers. It starts with proof-of-concept work in our walled-garden environment. We test, demonstrate how it works, identify risks and opportunities, and then map out how it could be deployed over time.
It’s about taking small steps, while still bringing genuinely new and commercially relevant innovation to lenders. That’s also why our Origin platform puts so much emphasis on flexibility and configurability.
Fignum’s Origin platform emphasises flexibility and configurability – how does this help lenders dealing with legacy systems?
Legacy technology remains a real challenge for many lenders. A lot of the conversations we’re having are about deploying Origin and our Evolve stack alongside existing systems, rather than replacing everything at once.
That allows lenders to redesign specific customer journeys — for example retention, post-contract variations, porting, or transfers of equity — where legacy platforms often struggle. Origin can alleviate those pain points immediately, without forcing a full re-platforming programme.
Can you describe how Evolve and Origin differ in terms of lender benefits, particularly for mortgage intermediaries?
Evolve is effectively the core operating system that underpins everything we do. Sitting on top of that, we have Origin, which supports mortgage and motor finance origination, covering the entire journey from application through to completion. We also have Adapt, our servicing platform — both built on the same Evolve foundation.
For intermediaries, the benefit is simple: better customer journeys. The platforms are intuitive, flexible and configurable. If you need to take a slightly different route — whether that’s using open banking or something like Experian’s Work Report — you can. That flexibility is critical in specialist lending, where it’s rarely one-size-fits-all.
What role do APIs and integrations play in streamlining origination workflows?
Five years ago, I’d have said APIs were everything — absolutely everything. Today, we’re seeing that evolve again as APIs increasingly interface with AI models.
That said, you still need a genuinely API-first architecture. That’s how you get data in, how you make decisions, and how you unlock real value. Without that foundation, it’s very hard to take advantage of the next generation of opportunities.
How do you see AI and automation shaping the future of mortgage origination and underwriting?
I think we’ll see very discrete AI capabilities embedded within operational processes. For example, an AI agent validating documents, doing the heavy lifting and then providing a red, amber or green outcome for the next step in that specific journey.
You might also have agents running across mortgage or loan applications to check data quality. spotting inconsistencies between documents, or flagging address mismatches. By way of example, how often does a misspelt name or inconsistently supplied address across several documents like the application COT, bank account information etc derail things?
These agents act as a flexible layer over the application process, rather than relying on rigid rule-sets. That flexibility is where the real value comes from.
What are the biggest technological gaps in the UK mortgage market today?
I don’t think the biggest challenge is technological — it’s inertia. We can’t keep doing things the way we’ve done them for the last 15 or 20 years, particularly when transaction times can stretch to 180 days.
Too often, that’s just accepted. We need to ask what role technology plays, but also what role the wider ecosystem plays in terms of how lenders, brokers, conveyancers and surveyors work together. Initiatives like the Open Property Data Association help, but there’s no silver bullet.
As an industry, we need to say this isn’t good enough. Technology matters, but it isn’t the whole answer.
With rising regulatory scrutiny and economic change, how are lenders using technology differently today?
We’re seeing lenders start to explore AI — taking baby steps rather than big leaps. As regulators push further into execution-only models and revisit advice triggers, I think we’ll see more innovation around differentiated journeys.
That’s what I’d call the Uberization of mortgages. Different journeys for different needs, built intelligently. I expect we’ll see more of that over the next 12 to 24 months.
What feedback are you hearing from brokers and lenders about digital platforms?
There’s a sense of fragmentation. Lots of platforms doing lots of different things in different ways. Some standardisation would definitely help, particularly around communication and origination processes.
There’s also fatigue. Everyone is pitching new technology, and buyers struggle to work out what’s genuinely valuable. The real need is for trusted partners who can help lenders navigate the ecosystem, plan sensibly, and respond when things change.
Too many lenders have spent years implementing large platforms that are already out of date and difficult to customise.
Looking ahead to 2030, how do you expect the ecosystem to evolve?
We’ll continue to see the whole ecosystem change, much as society is changing. We’re at a genuine inflection point.
Brokers will absolutely remain critical as advisers. Large banks will increasingly explore execution-only journeys to reduce cost and complexity. Conveyancing will shift away from pure transaction processing towards deeper advisory work around property and title risk.
For lenders, the backbone will be better technology, less friction, clearer data provenance and, in many cases, shared virtual data rooms- a virtual place where all the parties in a transaction can share documents and requests without endless emailing and chasing. That’s how we reduce transaction times, lower the cost to serve, and ultimately deliver a better customer experience.
