We wrote last April about the opportunity for habito to bring mortgages into the 21st century.

Mortgages are an enormous category, over £200 billion in the UK alone. Yet for a commodity-like product - who cares which lender your money comes from - it is exceedingly complex for a consumer to find the right mortgage, struggle through the jargon, and the mountain of paperwork, then stay on the best deal forever.

habito changed all of this in less than 12 months. Their AI-powered chatbot provides the right advice to homebuyers in minutes, with access to over 60 lenders and 10,000 mortgage products, and takes care of getting them the mortgage they need. Having worked closely with Daniel and the habito team for 18 months, we know that while this consumer feat may appear simple, the product development effort to achieve it has been enormous and has involved many iterations. And we know this is just the beginning for them as they seek to become the future of mortgages.

Daniel’s vision is to stand side-by-side with customers as they navigate one of their most critical life decisions, and to completely reinvent the mortgage experience. Using software to automate this process end-to-end is the goal for the next few years, and habito will soon be in a position to create new types of mortgage products, such as real-time completion or personalised yield curves and capital repayments.

We love entrepreneurs who are reinventing so-called boring categories like mortgages and we see many other opportunities within financial services. So, if you’re working on a big idea in the space, please get in touch.