Finova Partners With Covecta to Bring Agentic AI Capabilities to the UK Lending Market

Finova has partnered with Covecta to introduce agentic AI capabilities into the UK lending market, embedding intelligent AI agents into broker and origination workflows to accelerate decisions, reduce manual work and improve experiences.

Finova and Covecta team up to accelerate AI-powered lending experiences with intelligent agents integrated throughout broker and origination workflows.

Finova, a leading provider of cloud-based lending and mortgage technology in the UK, has formally announced a strategic partnership with Covecta, a specialist in agentic AI for financial services, to embed advanced AI capabilities into Finova’s lending platform. This collaboration is poised to redefine how lenders, brokers and support teams interact with complex lending processes — elevating efficiency, accuracy and user experience across the mortgage and lending value chain.

By integrating Covecta’s intelligent AI agents into Finova’s solutions, organisations using Finova’s platform will gain access to a new generation of automation that doesn’t simply automate routine tasks but intelligently responds and adapts within lending workflows, enabling faster decisions and more empowered users.

What This Partnership Means for the UK Lending Market

The UK lending landscape — particularly for mortgage origination and broker engagement — has historically been burdened by manual, repetitive tasks, redundant documentation, and slow consumer journeys. Finova’s platform already helps lenders streamline origination and servicing through its cloud-native architecture. Now, with Covecta’s agentic AI integrated, these workflows become even more intelligent.

Agentic AI refers to advanced AI systems designed not just to process information, but to act autonomously, understand context, and make decisions within a defined domain. In the context of lending, this means AI agents can:

  • Support brokers with real-time, conversational assistance within the lending portal.
  • Retrieve and interpret product rules, policies, and pricing logic instantly.
  • Proactively aggregate and summarise complex lender documentation, cutting review time.
  • Help navigate lender criteria and compliance checkpoints, reducing rework and human error.

According to early statements from Covecta’s leadership, the initial launch focus will be on Finova Broker Assist — an agentic capability embedded directly into Finova’s broker interface that improves access to lender policy, product information and guidance as brokers manage cases.

How the Integration Works

Rather than replacing existing systems, the Finova-Covecta solution augments Finova’s platform with autonomous, adaptive intelligence. Agents can:

  • Respond to queries in natural language based on lender documentation or policy definitions.
  • Surface actionable insights directly where users work, such as within application flows or broker dashboards.
  • Adapt to evolving business rules and product changes without heavy customisation.
  • Operate within the workflow context, meaning brokers and underwriters spend less time switching between systems.

This approach ensures that firms using Finova’s lending platform can benefit from AI without replacing their core infrastructure and processes — a critical factor in risk-adverse and regulated sectors like mortgages and secured lending.

Why This Matters: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Scalability

The UK mortgage market is one of the most competitive and compliance-heavy lending environments in the world. Brokers and underwriters must constantly balance speed and accuracy while ensuring that consumer duty and regulatory requirements are met. Integrating agentic AI into underwriting and broker workflows can provide:

1. Speedier Decision Support

AI agents can quickly interpret lender policies, criteria and documentation — helping brokers find answers in the moment rather than hunting through static guides or manuals.

2. Reduced Errors and Rework

By offering contextualised guidance and automated insights, the agents help reduce misunderstandings, prevent misconfigured applications, and minimise exceptions that slow down processing.

3. Enhanced Broker Experience

Brokers working with multiple lenders often have to switch between various product rules and systems. Centralising intelligent assistance within the lending portal simplifies their day-to-day work.

4. Scalable Talent Support

AI agents act like on-demand cognitive support for internal staff, enabling firms to scale operations without linearly increasing headcount — an especially important benefit as lending volumes grow.

Voices From the Field

Statements shared publicly on LinkedIn by executives involved in the partnership highlight the sentiment behind this collaboration:

  • Thomas Byrne, a senior leader at Covecta, expressed excitement about co-creating this experience with Finova’s team and emphasised how the solution will reimagine AI-augmented mortgage lending journeys with a focus on smart, efficient, and human-centered experiences.
  • Scott Wilson emphasised that this integration will disrupt traditional technology approaches by embedding AI directly into lending workflows — starting with broker portals and expanding into lending and origination capabilities without costly system migrations.

These perspectives reflect a broader belief that modern lending technology should be both technology-forward and aligned with human workflows, supporting users rather than replacing them.

Context: AI and Lending in the UK

Financial services in the UK have steadily embraced AI, but until recently, much of this watermarked hype centred on analytics or simple automation. Now, agentic AI represents the next frontier — with systems that can act and reason within their domain. This aligns with regulatory initiatives such as the FCA’s AI Live Testing Programme, which is helping firms safely deploy and govern AI in live environments, signalling that responsible AI use is increasingly encouraged in the UK market.

For lending technology providers, this trend offers competitive advantage. As market participants seek to differentiate via digital experiences — speeding up approval times and enhancing broker support without compromising compliance — solutions that blend deep domain knowledge with autonomous workflows will be key.

Challenges and Considerations

While the value of agentic AI is evident, thoughtful implementation is necessary:

  • Governance and compliance controls must be embedded to ensure agents produce reliable guidance aligned with lender policy.
  • User acceptance and training are crucial to ensure brokers and lenders trust AI assistance rather than circumvent it.
  • Data privacy and security considerations remain at the forefront — especially when integrating AI with regulated customer workflows.

However, partners like Finova and Covecta are positioning their integration as a safe, workflow-driven enhancement rather than a disruptive overhaul, encouraging adoption without extreme risk.

What’s Next for the Partnership

The collaboration is expected to evolve beyond broker support to include deeper workflow automation across lending origination, underwriting, and decisioning. As Covecta’s agents prove their early value within Finova’s ecosystem, future development could see broader AI-powered decision support, risk analytics, automated document interpretation, and even customer-facing tools within broker interfaces.

Early industry reactions suggest that intelligent automation with agentic AI could reduce manual friction meaningfully — a win for lenders, brokers and consumers alike.

Conclusion: A Step Toward Smarter Lending

Finova’s partnership with Covecta marks a significant milestone in the evolution of AI-empowered lending technology. By integrating agentic AI directly into lending workflows, Finova enables lenders and brokers to work faster, smarter and with more confidence — preserving human expertise while scaling digital capabilities.

This partnership is more than a technology announcement; it represents a shift toward human-centric automation in UK lending markets — blending AI intelligence with existing systems and deep domain experience to create a new standard for operational excellence and customer experience.