Canada Life

An innovative, award-winning mortgage platform

We often talk about the importance of partnerships with our clients, and our work with what is now the Canada Life Home Finance team is the perfect example. With a successful relationship that has run for over a decade, we have been able to build a suite of digital tools, products and workflows that have helped to optimise their offering as they've grown.

We began our relationship in 2005, working with what was originally Stonehaven. In 2014, the team and their services were acquired by MGM Advantage, and a year later they chose to rebrand to Retirement Advantage. Most recently, in January 2018, Canada Life announced the successful acquisition of Retirement Advantage, who now comprise the Canada Life Home Finance team. The Canada Life Home Finance platform is now a sophisticated and wide-reaching toolset that serves many areas of the business. However, our initial remit was small.

Iterative improvements

Our work with Stonehaven started with identifying where the real value lay for a business in its infancy. We delivered a simple online tool that allows Financial Advisors to generate illustrations for their customers.

By choosing to build out a tool that was designed explicitly around the needs of customers—the Financial Advisors—we helped to build market awareness and share at a critical stage.

Continuing to work closely together, we have been able to gain first-hand experience of the issues and pain points that the Home Finance team face on a daily basis, and have in-turn been able to make incremental improvements to their processes through the development of new products which would eventually serve as the backbone of their award-winning service.

A suite of bespoke web applications

Some of the products included within the platform are:

• Mortgage tools for independent financial advisors to aid the service that they provide to their customers
• Applications to handle the mortgage application process, including underwriting and the acceptance process
• API services for all of the above processes and more, allowing reporting and documentation

Retaining the independent spirit

We have been able to add significant efficiencies through the digital transformation of what has historically been an admin-intensive process. This has allowed the relatively small Canada Life Home Finance team to remain agile as the portfolio has grown to over £1 billion in funds under management. This extraordinary growth has prompted two major acquisitions in the last five years and has seen the company receive numerous industry awards, including Best Provider for Product Innovation.

Teamwork makes the dream work

Naturally, our internal Canada Life team have grown and evolved as the client relationship has flourished. Some of our engineers have been working with Canada Life for close to fifteen years, so as you can imagine, the knowledge base and pool of experience that we have built during this time is invaluable. Work is managed through agile workflows, daily standups and regular communication with Canada Life’s Home Finance team. The relationship itself is built around discussion over dictation, and this approach to tickets, projects and upgrades ensures work is planned and resourced efficiently, and most importantly, is well executed.