Fintel has agreed to buy the remaining shares in Mortgage Brain Holdings for £38.4m, completing a step-by-step takeover that began with a £1.5m minority investment in March 2024. The deal implies a value of roughly £40.8m for the whole business, against about £25.9m at the time of the first cheque.
Fintel, the Yorkshire-headquartered AIM-quoted group behind Defaqto and SimplyBiz Mortgages, has moved from minority shareholder to outright owner of one of the UK mortgage market's core software providers.
Mortgage Brain Holdings owns Mortgage Brain Limited, AE3 Media, Criteria Hub and Mortgage Engine. Its flagship platform is used to support around 40% of UK residential mortgage and buy-to-let applications.
The cap-table story
Fintel first joined the register in March 2024, paying £1.5m for a 5.8% stake. That price implied an equity value of about £25.9m for the whole group.
The £38.4m now being paid for the remaining 94.2% puts the implied value of 100% at roughly £40.8m. On The Cap Table's arithmetic, that is an uplift of close to 58% in about two and a half years. The original minority stake has worked as a way in: Fintel got access to the business and its data before committing to buy it outright.
Neither side disclosed how the consideration splits between cash and other instruments, or how the outgoing shareholders were made up.
Building a software and data division
The acquisition will sit inside Fintel's Software & Data division. The group already owns financial information provider Defaqto and holds a 49% stake in Plannr, which makes software for financial planners.
Mortgage Brain and Plannr have already connected their systems. Advisers can now move from gathering client information to submitting a mortgage application without switching platforms or re-keying data.
Fintel chief executive Matt Timmins said the deal strengthens the division, widens its reach across wealth, mortgage and multi-disciplinary advice firms, and adds to the scale of the group's proprietary data. He pointed to the Plannr integration as a basis for further AI tools for advisers.
Management and firepower
Zahid Bilgrami, Mortgage Brain's chief executive, stays in post and also becomes chief executive of Fintel's Software & Data division. He previously ran Defaqto for 11 years. Bilgrami said combining Mortgage Brain's mortgage data with Fintel's data across wealth, insurance and financial products creates a data set that has no equal in the UK market.
The deal follows an earlier move to lift Fintel's acquisition war chest to £120m to fund growth and M&A across its software and business support operations. A £38.4m purchase uses about a third of that capacity.
What's next
Fintel says it will keep investing in Mortgage Brain's technology and wants its software businesses to work together more closely, while advice firms keep control of their own data.
With Plannr still only 49% owned, the next question is whether Fintel repeats the minority-first approach and moves to full control of its planning software partner too.
Original source: Mortgage Strategy — https://www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk/news/fintel-buys-mortgage-brain-holdings-in-38-4m-deal/
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