Mortgage Brain vs Twenty7tec: sourcing, CRM and the broker workflow

Mortgage Brain and Twenty7tec are two of the most familiar names in UK mortgage technology, and brokers have compared them on sourcing for years. The comparison has widened. Both now present a set of products that reach past product research into criteria, case management, compliance and, in Mortgage Brain's case, submissions.

That changes what you are choosing. You are no longer picking a research tool. You are picking whose workflow your firm will live inside.

Start with the advisers, not the procurement

There is a question that settles more of this decision than any feature analysis: which research tool would your advisers refuse to give up?

Sourcing is a craft habit. Advisers learn a tool's quirks, its speed, where the affordability calculators sit and how to get an answer while a client is on the phone. Moving someone off a research tool they are fluent in has a real cost in the first month and a quieter cost in confidence.

If your advisers are already fluent in one of these ecosystems and content with it, that is a heavy thumb on the scale, and it is a legitimate one. If they are ambivalent, the field is genuinely open and you should evaluate both properly.

Where the two ecosystems put their emphasis

Mortgage Brain's public product set spans sourcing, criteria, submissions and a CRM, which points at a firm that wants the whole research-to-submission path from one supplier. Twenty7tec's adviser ecosystem pairs research with ADVICE, positioned across mortgage, protection and wealth, which points at a firm wanting one case system across more than one advice line.

Those are different bets about where a broker firm's complexity lives. One says the hard part is getting from research to a submitted application. The other says the hard part is running several advice lines against one client without three sets of records.

Which is the right bet depends on your business, not on the vendors. Confirm the current module lists, what each package contains and what integration means with each supplier directly, because product line-ups in this market change.

Test them on the same case

Vendors will each demonstrate the journey that flatters them. Do not let them choose. Take a case from your own files with something awkward in it — a self-employed applicant, a change of lender, a gifted deposit — and require the same walkthrough from both.

• Research the products for that client.
• Check criteria and affordability.
• Move the recommendation into the case record, and count the fields still typed by hand.
• Produce or support the suitability evidence.
• Prepare or submit the application.
• Show what the principal sees about that case a week later.

If a demo stops at the sourcing screen you have seen the cheap half. The expensive half is everything after the product is chosen.

Ask about the join in both directions

In a single-supplier stack, the interesting question is not whether products connect but how completely. Ask what happens when research is re-run after a criteria problem: does the case record update, or does the file now contain the first answer? Ask what a case looks like when two advisers have touched it. Ask what is stored as evidence automatically versus what depends on someone remembering to save something.

Lock-in, and how to price it

Consolidating with one supplier is a genuine efficiency and a genuine dependency. Before you sign, get three things in writing from whichever you choose: the contract term and notice period, what a full data export contains and in what format, and how pricing behaves as you add advisers or modules.

You are not being adversarial by asking. You are pricing the exit while you still have leverage, which is the only time it is cheap.

Support, training and the human factor

Two products can look similar on screen and feel very different once you are a customer. Ask each supplier how support is provided, what the response times are, whether you get a named contact during implementation and what training is included for a firm of your size.

Then ask for two reference customers of roughly your shape and ring them yourself with your own questions. Ask what went wrong at go-live, how long the team took to settle, and what they would do differently. Vendors will supply references who are happy; that is fine, because the useful information is in the detail of their first three months rather than in whether they recommend it.

Which firms should shortlist which

Shortlist Mortgage Brain if you want a long-established UK mortgage technology ecosystem with research, criteria, submissions and CRM under one roof, and if the path from recommendation to lender application is where your admin cost concentrates.

Shortlist Twenty7tec if you want research and case management tightly linked and your firm handles, or intends to handle, more than mortgages — particularly if management information and configurable workflow matter as your headcount grows.

Shortlist neither, yet, if your advisers are wedded to a research tool from a third supplier and your real problem is the client-facing end of the journey. In that case a different kind of platform, or a lighter layer around what you already run, may be the better answer.

The measure that decides it

Count the fields. Take one real case through each and count how many pieces of information a human enters more than once. Then ask what the same count looks like today. The difference between those numbers, multiplied by your monthly case volume, is the actual value on offer — and it is a figure you can produce yourself rather than accepting one from a brochure.