We built what we wished existed.

It started with a spreadsheet. Several of them: active cases on one, outstanding documents on another, compliance notes on a third that nobody had updated in three months. A separate email folder for client correspondence. A shared drive full of PDFs named things like jones_p60_FINAL_v2_amended.pdf where nobody could tell which version had actually been sent to the lender.

Every case involved the same cycle: chase the client for their payslips and bank statements, wait, chase again, receive the wrong document, ask for a resubmission. Chase for proof of address. Chase for the P60. Meanwhile the phone rings. “Just checking in, where are we up to?” Thirty minutes gone on a call that a simple client portal would have made unnecessary.

Then there's compliance. Under MCOB, advisers must be able to produce their full case records within two working days of an FCA request: recommendations, documents, client interactions, all of it. For a firm running 30 or 40 active cases across email threads and shared folders, that two-day window is a real problem. The suitability report that has to justify every recommendation? Most advisers write it at the end of the week from memory, not at the point the advice was given.

We came from financial services technology. We'd watched advisers spend eight to ten hours per case on work a decent system would have handled automatically. We looked at everything in the market. Most tools were built for financial planning broadly, or generic CRMs with the words “mortgage” dropped into the marketing. Not one had FCA compliance designed in from the start, or understood the UK mortgage journey well enough to map it properly.

So we built Cleera. Purpose-built for UK mortgage advice. Not adapted from something else.