57. Molo

Founders: Francesca Carlesi and Leo Grünstein
Founded: 2018
Website: www.molofinance.com

In 2020, there’s not a lot that you can’t do online. But anyone who’s ever bought a property will tell you that that process is still pretty much in the dark ages, with mountains of paperwork, lengthy meetings, and a timescale of weeks required simply to secure yourself a mortgage.

Well, not anymore. Molo is the UK’s first digital-only mortgage lender, which aims to make home buying easier, faster, and more accessible for everyone.

Founded by Francesca Carlesi and Leo Grünstein in 2018, Molo has fully digitised the process of getting a mortgage. By automating the decision-making, Molo bypasses obsolete practises and removes human subjectivity from the equation. The result? Necessary credit, identity, address, and valuation checks are carried out rapidly, but still with reliability and security. As it stands, Molo can deliver a mortgage decision within a matter of minutes.

But all this digitisation doesn’t mean that Molo can’t put people first. The start-up’s team boasts expertise across finance, mortgages, and tech, and has worked together to create a simple and seamless user experience, with transparent, jargon-free decisions that are based on the data that matters. And to make user journeys that much smoother, Molo has partnerships in place with Experian, Rightmove, Zoopla, Starling Bank, and Money.co.uk.

Molo’s “mortgages in minutes” have definitely struck a chord with beleaguered property buyers. Since its initial product offering of buy-to-let mortgages for individuals, which launched in October 2018, Molo has been able to expand to offer multiple limited company products. Portfolio landlord and residential mortgages are now in its pipeline, too.

Molo says that its aim is to help transform the way the home-financing works, for good. We’ll certainly be watching as this intelligent fintech business continues making strides towards that goal.