Mortgages without the usual paperwork hassle? Lloyds thinks it's closer than you’d believe
Lloyds Banking Group has just fired the starting gun on what it thinks could be the biggest shake-up in UK homebuying since the smartphone landed in everyone’s pockets.
Speaking at the FT’s Global Banking Summit, CEO Charlie Nunn painted a future where mortgages, conveyancing, document shuffling and value-exchange are rebuilt from the ground up using AI and tokenised deposits.
Nunn insists this isn’t another fintech fad. Blending blockchain-backed deposits together with sophisticated AI models could revamp the entire homebuying grind — from legal checks to document chasing.
And for Lloyds — the UK’s biggest mortgage lender — the first target is obvious: the homebuying process itself.
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Smart contracts instead of snail-mail conveyancers? That’s the pitch
Nunn sketches a future where much of the mortgage journey runs on smart contracts: documents move automatically, payments trigger instantly, and an AI system oversees the process with the sort of rule-book recall that even seasoned underwriters would envy.
He even suggests the whole homebuying journey can be rebuilt “completely”; stripping out friction, manual checks and (thankfully) a good chunk of the legal fees that make everyone cringe on completion day.
Stablecoins aren’t the route Nunn wants to take. He argues tokenised deposits — effectively blockchain versions of real customer funds — offer the same instant movement of money but with the oversight lenders and regulators expect.
And he's talking more than theory: Lloyds wants a token system up and running by 2027 as part of its core infrastructure.
The “smartphone moment” for finance
Nunn didn’t mince words on the scale of the shift he’s predicting.
He compares it to the smartphone revolution: just as phones rewired how we shop, socialise and work, the combination of AI and tokenised deposits could create a “wow moment” in financial services — one where customers suddenly find the system more personal, intuitive and far easier to navigate.
Pointing to the US Genius Act on stablecoins, Nunn said tokenisation is gaining momentum on a global scale.
Lloyds has already tested the technology across its entire network, and Nunn claims no other market — not Singapore, not China — comes close.
Will this fix the UK economy? Well…
READ MORE: Another challenging year ahead for UK economy
While the tech vision was bold, Nunn also lobbed a few grenades at the state of the UK economy: high energy bills, heavy regulation and labour costs that keep investment on ice.
As the UK’s biggest retail bank, Lloyds tends to reflect the economic weather — and Nunn says confidence still isn’t where it needs to be. His view? More digital finance, more productivity and more business investment are essential if the UK wants to grow again.
What this means for the mortgage market
If Lloyds gets its way, the next era of homebuying could look radically different:
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Fewer intermediaries slowing things down
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AI-driven guidance replacing back-and-forth admin
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Smart contracts cleaning up the conveyancing muddle
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Funds moved instantly instead of in days
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Brokers focusing on advice and not paperwork
Whether this becomes the smart-contract utopia Nunn describes or just the next step in the UK's painfully slow mortgage modernisation remains to be seen. But one thing’s clear: Lloyds has put the sector on notice.
The smartphone moment for mortgages might finally be coming, and this time not even the property lawyers can stand in the way.
