CrestwellAsk ten brokers what software they use and you will get answers that are not comparable: a CRM, a sourcing system, a network-mandated back office, a spreadsheet, and increasingly an AI tool that does one job well. They are not alternatives to each other. Working out which category you are missing is most of the decision.
The four categories
| Category | The job it does | You feel the gap when |
|---|---|---|
| Case management / CRM | Holds the client, the case, the pipeline and the compliance record end to end | Cases live in your inbox and you cannot say what is outstanding across the book |
| Sourcing and affordability | Searches lender products and criteria, and returns what a lender would actually lend | You are checking criteria on lender websites one at a time |
| Client-facing collection | Gets documents and fact-find answers out of the client and into a file | You are chasing payslips by text message |
| AI admin layer | Reads documents and meetings and drafts the paperwork for you to approve | The advice takes an hour and writing it up takes three |
Most established firms already own the first two, often because a network mandates them. The newer products cluster in the third and fourth, which is where the time actually goes.
Case management and CRM
The long-standing UK platforms in this space include 360 Lifecycle, Smartr365, Acre, Finova, One Mortgage System and Mortgage Brain. Each positions itself as the system a broking business runs on: client records, the case pipeline, compliance, commissions and reporting, usually with sourcing either built in or integrated.
What to test when you demo one: whether the fact find matches the questions you actually ask, how much re-keying happens between the fact find and a lender application, what the compliance file looks like at the end, and how painful it is to get your existing cases in. Migration is the cost people underestimate — the software is rarely the problem, the data move is.
If your network mandates a back office, this decision may already be made for you. In that case the question is not which CRM, but what sits alongside it.
Sourcing and affordability
Twenty7tec, Mortgage Brain and MBT are the names you will meet, and several CRMs embed one of them. This category answers "which lenders will lend this client this amount, on these criteria" — a question that needs live lender data and therefore a commercial relationship with lenders. It is not a job a general tool can do credibly, and any product claiming to source without that relationship deserves a hard question.
Getting documents out of clients
Portals and collection tools, whether standalone or built into a CRM, exist because the slowest part of most cases is waiting for a client. The things that separate them: whether the client can use it on a phone without an account, whether it chases automatically, whether documents arrive filed against the right requirement or in a pile, and whether an email forward works when the client ignores the portal entirely.
The AI admin layer
This is the newest and busiest category. Products here — Crestwell among them, alongside a growing set of UK entrants — do not try to replace a CRM. They take the clerical work: reading a folder of paperwork, transcribing a client meeting, drafting the fact find, the file note and the suitability letter, and chasing what is missing.
The questions worth asking any product in this category, ours included:
- Can you see where every extracted value came from, before you accept it? A number with no source behind it is a number you have to check by hand anyway, which removes the point.
- Does anything reach a client file without a human approving it? It should not. An automated decision in regulated advice is a different regulatory animal entirely.
- Where is client data stored and processed, and is it used to train models? Get this in writing.
- What happens to meeting audio, and when is it deleted?
- Does it integrate with the CRM you already run, or does it become a second place where client data lives?
How to run the decision
- Time one real case, end to end. Write down where the hours actually went — not where you assume they went. Almost every firm finds the answer is document chasing and writing up, not advice.
- Decide which category that points at. If the pain is pipeline visibility, no AI tool fixes it. If the pain is writing up, a new CRM will not fix it either.
- Demo with your own documents and a real case, not the vendor's sample. Sample packs are always clean; your clients' paperwork is not.
- Ask what happens when it gets something wrong, and look at the correction path. You will spend more time there than in the happy path.
- Check the exit before you sign: how you get your data out, in what format, and how long it takes.
Where Crestwell is the wrong choice
Since we build one of these, it is only fair to be specific about when not to buy it.
- You need sourcing. Crestwell does not search lender products or quote protection premiums, and it does not submit applications. If that is the gap, this is not the answer.
- Your network mandates a back office and forbids anything alongside it. Ask them first; the answer is sometimes yes and always cheaper to find out early.
- Your problem is pipeline visibility rather than admin volume. A case management system will serve you better.
- You want a system that files cases without you reading them. Every draft here waits for an adviser to approve it, deliberately. If that sounds like friction rather than the point, we are not a fit.
Where it does fit: firms whose advice is fine and whose write-up is eating the week — the fact find, the file note, the suitability letter, the chasing — and who want that work drafted from the evidence with a source against every field.
See what Crestwell drafts, and what stays with the adviser. What it does.