Digital Disruption

Novus Strategy

Digital Disruption is a Podcast for Business leaders and Tech Entrepreneurs. Each episode of the Podcast I will bring you the stories of founders, CEO's, innovative thinkers and the people at the grass roots level inside organisations driving through digital transformation, disrupting industries with technology and driving change. Sharing their stories, lessons learned and how they are successfully leveraging technology, to disrupt and drive through change. About your host: Chris Williams has been helping enterprises and brands to innovate and adopt emerging technologies, driving through digital transformation and change for almost 20 years. Building new revenue streams and defining cutting edge solutions to complex problems. Chris founded and built one of the first management consultancy firms dedicated to supporting organisations going through Digital Transformation, servicing clients across multiple sectors in the UK, USA and Europe.

  1. 4d ago

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

    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: hello@novus-strategy.com 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

  2. Jun 23

    Smart Data, Data Exchange and Orchestration: what mortgage lenders need to know now and why.

    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 hello@novus-strategy.com.

  3. Jun 10

    The First Smart Property Data Trust Framework Test: Proving It Works.

    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 hello@novus-strategy.com.

    The First Smart Property Data Trust Framework Test: Proving It Works.

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About

Digital Disruption is a Podcast for Business leaders and Tech Entrepreneurs. Each episode of the Podcast I will bring you the stories of founders, CEO's, innovative thinkers and the people at the grass roots level inside organisations driving through digital transformation, disrupting industries with technology and driving change. Sharing their stories, lessons learned and how they are successfully leveraging technology, to disrupt and drive through change. About your host: Chris Williams has been helping enterprises and brands to innovate and adopt emerging technologies, driving through digital transformation and change for almost 20 years. Building new revenue streams and defining cutting edge solutions to complex problems. Chris founded and built one of the first management consultancy firms dedicated to supporting organisations going through Digital Transformation, servicing clients across multiple sectors in the UK, USA and Europe.