Digital Disruption

Economic Abuse and Joint Mortgages: What Lenders Can Do Now

Content note: this episode discusses domestic abuse and economic abuse. Support contacts are at the end of this description.

For many survivors of domestic abuse, the abuse carries on after they leave, through the mortgage. Both names stay liable, so a former partner can stop paying, block a sale or remortgage and let arrears build, while the survivor's credit file takes the damage. Surviving Economic Abuse found that one in eight UK women who held a joint mortgage over a two-year period experienced economic abuse through it, which it puts at more than 750,000 people (Opinium survey for Surviving Economic Abuse, September 2024).

In this episode of the Digital Disruption podcast, Chris Williams, Partner at Novus, talks to Natalie Ellis, Managing Director of Steel City Mortgages, about economic abuse through joint mortgages and what it means for UK mortgage lenders.

Natalie's starting point: a credit report records what happened financially, but it doesn't tell a lender why. She describes clients left with defaults and CCJs caused by someone else's behaviour, who then meet automated declines and have to retell their story to their adviser, the underwriter, the solicitor and the estate agent. Chris links this to the redesign of the mortgage journey now under way. With the survivor's consent, what they disclose could be captured once and travel with the case.

Three things lenders can do now: → Train advisers, underwriters, administrators and servicing teams in how economic abuse affects joint mortgages, transfers of equity, arrears and credit scores. This is Natalie's first priority, and she is clear she doesn't want "another CPD annual tick-box exercise". → Build a clear specialist support pathway, so a broker knows who to call and a survivor tells their story once. → Give these cases individual consideration, with a manual review by a trained team before an automated rule declines on a default.

Read Natalie's article, "Escaping abuse shouldn't mean a lifetime of mortgage difficulties", in Digital Disruption #22: https://events.novus-strategy.com/digital-disruption-newsletter-archive

Chris closes with a message to lenders: "Mortgage lenders, you can definitely do more. We can all do more." Automation should fast-track the right decisions, with a person in the loop for the cases a rule cannot read.

Chapters 0:00 Welcome 0:25 How Chris and Natalie met 1:41 How a joint mortgage keeps the abuse going 5:29 What a credit report can't tell a lender 8:35 Why vulnerability flags fall short 9:56 Automation and the risk of the wrong decision faster 13:31 Telling the story once 16:32 Better access for survivors 18:53 What lenders can do now 19:50 Natalie's priority: specialist training 21:48 Chris's recap 23:30 How to contact Natalie, and where to find support 24:32 Close

Chris Williams is a Partner at Novus Strategy and leads its strategy and transformation practice, working with UK lenders and building societies on where to invest across the mortgage journey.

Natalie Ellis is Managing Director of Steel City Mortgages, a mortgage and protection broker in Sheffield, and has advised on mortgages for more than 20 years: https://www.steelcitymortgages.co.uk

If anything in this episode affects you, support is available: IDAS, the Yorkshire domestic abuse charity Natalie supports: https://www.idas.org.uk National Domestic Abuse Helpline, free and open 24 hours, run by Refuge: 0808 2000 247 Surviving Economic Abuse: https://survivingeconomicabuse.org

Suggest a topic for a future episode: [email protected] Subscribe to the Digital Disruption newsletter: https://events.novus-strategy.com/newsletter-sign-up Learn more at novus-strategy.com

#DigitalDisruption #EconomicAbuse #MortgageLending #UKMortgages #MortgageBrokers #FinancialServices

Budget 2026: What It Means for Mortgage Lenders | Digital Disruption Podcast

The Budget is trying to make bank capital go further so lenders can lend more. That capital only becomes lending if your mortgage journey can carry more cases, and a lot of today's capacity goes on handoffs that stall and cases that never complete. Around 30% of property transactions fall through (GOTO Group and the Council for Licensed Conveyancers).

In this episode of the Digital Disruption podcast, Pete Gatenby and Chris Williams, Partners at Novus, break down Budget 2026 and what it means for UK mortgage lenders, and also cover what the Budget's AI measures signal for lenders putting AI into the journey.

Chris's case: the friction sits in the handoffs, between firms and between teams inside the lender, where work that takes minutes can wait days in an inbox. Taking it out releases capacity now, and the same work lays the data foundation for Smart Data and AI. Lenders joining up those handoffs with brokers, conveyancers and suppliers are building their Horizontal Digital Integration strategies. Pete picks out two AI measures in the Budget: the Financial Policy Committee has been asked to examine the financial stability risks of AI, and £40m will fund a national capability to respond to security incidents involving AI agents. His point for lenders: AI is only as good as the data and the workflow it is given.

Five things for lenders to act on: → Find the friction in your journey and take it out, starting with the handoffs between teams and between firms. → Prioritise and sequence the work for your own journey. There is no single blueprint. → Stop waiting for mandates. The national Digital ID scheme has gone, so agree with brokers and conveyancers how an identity check made once can be reused. → Get your data ready for Smart Data now, so you can use sources such as HMRC data if and when they reach Open Finance. → Redesign the workflow before you add AI agents to it. AI layered onto today's process keeps the same wasted steps.

Chris goes further in his executive briefing, "Budget 2026: what it means for UK mortgage lenders": https://events.novus-strategy.com/en-gb/budget-2026-executive-briefing Watch Chris's Budget bulletin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24k2sSi3G0c

Pathfinder by Novus builds a digital twin of your mortgage journey. Novus practitioners run it so you can see where value is trapped across the mortgage journey, test how to unlock it, and model the impact before you invest.

There will be no big bang. In Chris's words, "what needs to be true is already true": the data and the technology exist, and the reform roadmap is published. The lenders starting now are designing the workflows they will scale on.

Chapters 0:00 Welcome 0:34 Chris's read on the Budget 2:40 Why extra capital needs a journey that can carry more cases 4:54 Where friction sits in the journey 7:11 What friction costs a lender 8:33 Digital ID, HMRC data and what they tell lenders 11:54 How a check done once gets relied on by everyone 13:30 What needs to be true 15:26 AI in the Budget 18:32 Redesign the workflow before adding AI 22:42 Close

Pete Gatenby is a Partner at Novus Strategy and leads its AI Practice, focusing on AI capability and digital infrastructure across the UK mortgage and home buying market.

Chris Williams is a Partner at Novus Strategy and leads its strategy and transformation practice, working with UK lenders and building societies on where to invest across the mortgage journey.

Suggest a topic for a future episode: [email protected] Subscribe to the Digital Disruption newsletter: https://events.novus-strategy.com/newsletter-sign-up Learn more at novus-strategy.com

#DigitalDisruption #Budget2026 #MortgageLending #UKMortgages #SmartData #HDI #AI #FinancialServices

Smart data, standards, trust frameworks, data exchange and orchestration are terms every lender is hearing right now, and most are being used interchangeably when they shouldn't.

In this episode the Novus Strategy team pulls them apart, explains how they fit together, and sets out what lenders should be doing about it now.

• What Smart Data actually is: verifiable, reusable data that moves securely between parties
• The difference between a data exchange (the rail that moves verified data) and orchestration (the layer that coordinates it)
• Where HDI (Horizontal Digital Integration) sits as the operating model that makes Smart Data usable
• Why a decade of digitisation made transactions slower, not faster, and what vertical vs horizontal integration really means
• The signals driving urgency now: the Data (Use and Access) Act, government-backed programmes, and property as a priority use case
• How this scales, the closed vs open loop question, and the governance and monopoly risks worth watching
• Why none of the AI being sold to lenders works without the data foundations underneath it

Fundamentally, stop guessing where your friction sits and ask us about Pathfinder, our mortgage journey simulator, and quantify the highest-value moves before you commit a pound of investment.

If you sit in transformation, product or customer journey, this is the context behind the questions lenders keep bringing us.

To be the first to receive our monthly Digital Disruption newsletter in print, sign up here: https://events.novus-strategy.com/newsletter-sign-up

For more insights, visit https://www.novus-strategy.com/ connect with us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/novus-strategy/ or email us at [email protected].

The UK takes around 134 days to complete a home purchase, and roughly a third of sales fall through. The problem isn't technology. It's data: manual, duplicated, non-portable, non-trusted data.

In this episode of the Digital Disruption Podcast, Claire Van der Zant, Chief Exec of Novus Strategy, is joined by three organisations who have just proved a different model works. The Smart Property Data Trust Framework Sandbox has run its first successful test, moving data between organisations with provenance and trust intact, rather than recreating it from scratch at every organisational boundary.

Our guests:

• Stephen Ward, Director of Strategy and External Relations at the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC)
• Eddie Davies, Deputy Director for PropTech and Platform Integration at HM Land Registry
• Kieran Witt, Founder of Kotini

What we cover:

• What actually moved in the sandbox, and how data travelled with a signature and a verifiable key
• Why you no longer need to trust the company sending the data, only the framework underpinning it
• The "innovation tax" firms pay to access data, and what falls away once it's removed
• "Speed to confidence": why certainty earlier in the transaction matters more than raw speed
• What changes for lenders, including the thousands of identity mismatches that quietly derail automation
• What's left to solve: governance, agreed standards, and getting the whole market to move together

To be the first to receive our monthly Digital Disruption newsletter in print, sign up here: https://events.novus-strategy.com/newsletter-sign-up

For more insights, visit https://www.novus-strategy.com/ connect with us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/novus-strategy/ or email us at [email protected].

In this end of year edition of the Digital Disruption podcast, hosted by Claire Van der Zant, Chris Williams and Pete Gatenby, we look back at a pivotal year for the home buying and selling sector and share what it means for the road ahead.

From the biggest shifts of 2025 to the smart moves organisations need to make in 2026, it's a forward-looking conversation you won't want to miss.

To be the first to receive our monthly Digital Disruption newsletter in print, sign up here: https://events.novus-strategy.com/newsletter-sign-up

For more insights, visit https://www.novus-strategy.com/ connect with us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/novus-strategy/ or email us at [email protected].

In this November micro-edition of the Digital Disruption Podcast, Pete Gatenby, AI Practice Partner at Novus Strategy, is joined by Alastair Thornton, Director of Growth at Yopa. Together, they explore how Horizontal Digital Integration (HDI) is reshaping the property sector - and what estate agents can do today to stay ahead.

They explore:

• Why Proof of Concept is becoming a key catalyst for progress in 2025
• How connected digital thinking can streamline the home-buying journey
• Why shared data and joined-up working matter more than ever
• How to strike the right balance between smart tech and human expertise with Horizontal Digital Integration (HDI)

To be the first to receive our monthly Digital Disruption newsletter in print, sign up here: https://events.novus-strategy.com/newsletter-sign-up

For more insights, visit https://www.novus-strategy.com/ connect with us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/novus-strategy/ or email us at [email protected].

In this month's micro-edition of the Digital Disruption Podcast, Pete Gatenby, AI Practice Partner at Novus Strategy, is joined by Robert Thickett, Digital Policy Manager at the Building Societies Association. Together, they discuss how building societies are approaching digital transformation, the role of AI, and the emerging innovations shaping the mutual sector.

This episode dives into:

• How AI can speed up onboarding and reduce friction for savings and mortgage customers
• Why large language models may already outperform traditional customer service in certain scenarios
• How digital identity and electronic signatures could remove the need for paper-heavy processes
• Where building societies can expect the biggest gains from practical, policy-aligned digital transformation

To be the first to receive our monthly Digital Disruption newsletter in print, sign up here: https://events.novus-strategy.com/newsletter-sign-up

For more insights, visit https://www.novus-strategy.com/ connect with us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/novus-strategy/ or email us at [email protected].

In this micro-edition of the Digital Disruption Podcast, Claire Van der Zant (Novus Strategy) is joined by Mat Hahn, Head of Estate Agent Partnerships at the LMS.

They explore:

• Why 2025 marks a turning point for digital progress in estate agency

• How Horizontal Digital Integration (HDI) is reshaping the property transaction process

• The growing role of material information and smarter collaboration across the chain

• Finding the right balance between technology and human service in the home-moving journey

• What a future-ready estate agency model could look like over the next five years

For more insights and assistance in your digital transformation, visit https://www.novus-strategy.com/ and connect with us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/novus-strategy/ or email us at [email protected].

In this micro-edition of the Digital Disruption Podcast, Chris Williams (Novus Strategy) is joined by Paul Broadhead, Head of Mortgage and Housing Policy at the Building Societies Association.

They explore:

• Why 2025 has brought renewed momentum to the mortgage market
• The role of regulation in enabling (or restricting) innovation
• How horizontal digital integration could transform the home buying process
• The balance between technology and human advice for first-time buyers
• What a future-proof mortgage market could look like in the next five years

For more insights and assistance in your digital transformation, visit https://www.novus-strategy.com/ and connect with us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/novus-strategy/ or email us at [email protected].

In this episode of Digital Disruption, we explore Agentic AI and its potential uses for the UK homebuying and property sector.

Host Pete is joined by Novus Strategy's new CEO, Claire van der Zant to discuss how AI is evolving beyond chatbots and automation – now capable of taking initiative, making decisions, and linking complex processes across the housing chain.

We delve into:

• What Agentic AI is and how it works Real-world use cases in property, conveyancing, and lending
• Why the UK risks missing out on a £400 billion AI opportunity
• The importance of ethical AI adoption, transparency, and "humans in the loop"
• Practical steps for professionals looking to implement AI safely and effectively

Whether you're a lender, proptech founder, estate agent or conveyancer, this episode offers valuable insights into the future of AI in the property industry.

For more insights, visit our website or connect with us on LinkedIn.

• To connect with Pete on LinkedIn visit - Pete's LinkedIn profile
• To connect with Chris on LinkedIn visit - Chris's LinkedIn profile

For more insights and assistance in your digital transformation, visit https://www.novus-strategy.com/ and connect with us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/novus-strategy/ or email us at [email protected].

#IndustryInsights #NovusStrategy #DigitalTransformation #Innovation #AI #FutureOfWork #HDI #HorizontalDigitalIntegration #DigitalIntegration #UKHomeBuying #UKHomeBuyingAndSelling #PropTech #Lender #PropertyMarket #DigitalMaturity #Interoperability