Finova buys AI start-up Cubit Labs in push to automate broker-led mortgage lending
Finova, the UK cloud-based mortgage, savings and lending software provider, has acquired Cubit Labs, an AI technology company focused on intermediary workflows and compliance. The deal, announced on 1 July, is a bet that the next round of competitive advantage in UK lending comes not from another front-end, but from stripping manual work out of the broker-to-lender handover itself.
Financial terms were not disclosed. Cubit Labs' founders and team join Finova as part of the transaction.
Cubit Labs has built a set of AI-native capabilities intended to support mortgage advisers, automate manual processes and improve the flow of information between brokers and lenders. Finova's stated ambition is to allow more of the lending journey to be simplified, automated and completed before a formal application is ever submitted, which is where most of the rework and drop-out in mortgage origination currently sits.
The strategic logic rests on a structural feature of the UK market: mortgage distribution remains overwhelmingly intermediary-led, yet the plumbing between brokers and lenders is still characterised by fragmented processes, duplicated data entry and manual administration. Every re-keyed applicant record is a cost line and a compliance exposure. Finova frames the acquisition as a step towards a platform connecting the full lending lifecycle, spanning origination, decisioning, servicing, data and AI-driven automation.
"Technology has transformed how customers access financial services, yet much of the lending process still relies on manual workflows, duplicated effort and disconnected systems," said Gareth Richardson, chief executive officer of Finova. "Brokers play a critical role in the UK lending market, and we believe technology should help them spend more time advising customers and less time navigating administration."
Max Hayden, co-founder of Cubit Labs, said: "Brokers play a fundamental role in the UK lending market, and we believe technology should make their lives easier, not more complicated."
Finova is a substantial incumbent rather than a challenger. The company says it supports more than 50 lenders, around 3,000 mortgage brokers and 200 financial institutions, and it has been backed by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities since 2024, when the firm invested in Finova and MSO and brought the two mortgage platforms under common ownership. That sponsor backing gives it the balance sheet to buy capability rather than build it.
Taken together, the deal reads as an early example of a pattern banking executives should expect to see repeated: established lending software vendors acquiring small AI teams to defend their platforms before AI-native entrants reach the incumbents' distribution. For lenders, the practical question is not whether their origination vendor now has an AI story, but whether the automation reaches the broker workflow where the friction and the cost actually live.
