habito

Habito set out to fix one of the most stressful financial decisions people make: getting a mortgage.

As Product Design Director, I worked across product, operations, and leadership to simplify the mortgage journey while helping the company evolve from a digital broker into a broader homeownership platform.

The work focused on two parallel goals:

1. making mortgages easier for customers while improving operational efficiency

2. driving sustainable growth for the business.

Product Design Director

• Product strategy and platform design

• Service design across the mortgage journey

• AI-assisted operational workflows

• Design systems and platform consistency

• Cross-functional leadership across product, engineering, operations and marketing

Led and scaled a multidisciplinary design team while working closely with executives to evolve Habito’s product strategy as the company moved toward profitability.

£9 Billion

in revenue generated

20%

improvement in operational efficiency

4.9/5

rating on Trustpilot

500,000

customers served

10X

improvement in operational volume

Mortgages are complex, opaque, and emotionally stressful.

Customers often struggle with:

• Confusing terminology

• Unclear timelines

• Fragmented services across lenders, brokers, and solicitors

• High advisory fees

For many people it is difficult to know whether they are getting the best deal or even making the right decision.

At the same time, internally Habito faced a different challenge.

As the company scaled, advisors and operations teams were managing increasing case volumes across fragmented tools and manual processes.

To grow sustainably, the product needed to simplify the customer experience while reducing operational complexity behind the scenes.

One of the key strategic shifts during this period was expanding Habito from a single mortgage journey into a broader homeownership platform.

Instead of focusing purely on mortgage comparison and application, the product evolved to support customers across:

• Buying a home

• Moving home

• Remortgaging

• Long-term homeownership

This shift reframed Habito from a transactional broker into a long-term partner for homeowners.

At the core of the platform was a digital mortgage journey designed to make complex decisions easier.

Customers can:

• Explore thousands of mortgage products using whole-of-market data

• Receive personalised matches using automated recommendation tools

• Complete applications and document uploads online

• Track progress through to completion

Expert advisers remain available throughout the journey, combining automation with human guidance when customers need reassurance.

The goal was to give customers clarity and confidence during a high-stakes financial decision.

To evolve Habito from a mortgage broker into a full homeownership platform, we introduced two complementary offerings:

Habito Plus — a paid end-to-end home-buying service designed to help customers secure properties faster and with greater certainty.

Key benefits:

• Moves customers through a single, joined-up experience instead of juggling separate brokers, lenders, and conveyancers

• Provides mortgage advice tailored to individual needs

• Includes dedicated case management

• Offers hands-on support for making and managing offers, progressing the mortgage application, and coordinating conveyancing and legal steps

• Reduces delays, increases completion likelihood, and gives buyers more confidence in a competitive housing market

Habito One — a long-term fixed-rate mortgage designed to give homeowners payment certainty across the full term of their loan.

Key benefits:

• Provides a single fixed-rate mortgage for the entire term

• Eliminates the need to remortgage every few years

• Protects customers from interest rate volatility

• Simplifies long-term homeownership planning

• Moves customers from one-off transactions to an ongoing relationship with Habito

Scaling Habito’s home-buying platform required major improvements to internal operations.

We redesigned the internal case management system to support the growing volume of customers while reducing errors and wasted effort. AI and automation were embedded to help the team prioritize work and flag potential issues early.

Key improvements:

• Redesigned workflows for Mortgage Experts, Mortgage Admins, and Case Managers to make responsibilities clear and reduce handoff confusion

• Introduced a Submission Guide for Mortgage Experts to ensure all information is complete before submission, with AI-powered validation checks highlighting missing or inconsistent data

• Created the Packaged Case for Mortgage Admins, consolidating all customer data in one place and reducing keying errors through automated prompts

• Built structured task management for Case Managers to track offers, surveys, and conveyancing steps, with AI assisting in prioritization and alerting teams to delays

• Improved internal dashboards to provide real-time visibility into case progress and team performance, including AI-driven insights to optimize throughput

These changes reduced case resubmissions, lowered error rates, and enabled teams to focus on delivering a better experience for customers while leveraging AI to scale operations efficiently.

Mortgage decisions are deeply emotional.

Customers are committing to decades-long financial obligations, often with limited experience or understanding of the process.

Design focused on creating an experience that felt:

• Clear and jargon-free

• Supportive rather than sales-driven

• Efficient without feeling rushed

The goal was to make people feel informed and supported rather than overwhelmed.

Designing financial products at scale requires balancing simplicity with regulatory and operational complexity.

A few lessons stood out:

• Clarity builds trust.
  Financial decisions become easier when information is transparent and understandable.

• Customer experience and operations are deeply connected.
  Improving internal systems often has the biggest impact on the user experience.

• Platforms create long-term value.
  Expanding beyond a single transaction allows companies to build stronger relationships with customers.

I continue to apply these principles when designing fintech platforms that simplify complex journeys and deliver measurable business outcomes.

Team

Alice Duddy, Kate Gorrell, Emma Jones, Will Jones, Andrea Krndija, Christine Lejeune, Pia Leung, Christopher Magoba, Afy Nourallah, Paolo Riozzi, Elliot Svensen, Jack Young

COMPANY / Launch

Habito / 2021 ​— 2023