Market Mortgage: Streamlining mortgage finance with Zoho Books
The company
Market Mortgage is a UK-based fintech company that provides innovative mortgage solutions, making home-ownership more accessible. Its flagship product, Own New Rate Reducer, launched in February 2024 in partnership with major banks and financial institutions like Virgin Money and Halifax. The product is a subsidised mortgage for new-build buyers. Brian O’Neill, Director of Market Mortgage, said, “Thanks to Zoho, we’re able to run what essentially is a £3–4 million finance department almost single-handedly.”
The challenge
Before Zoho Books, Market Mortgage relied on Xero but faced limitations in automation and integration. Complex mortgage transactions required extensive manual work, making it difficult to scale.
"It became apparent that Xero just didn’t have enough automations or integrations into the systems that we needed. I knew if we were going to be processing large volumes of transactions, we would need some sort of automation in place."
BRIAN O'NEILL,
FOUNDER,
Market Mortgage
The solution
O’Neill migrated seven years of financial data to Zoho Books and set up workflows that integrated with Zoho CRM.
“Transferring all the transactions actually wasn’t that difficult,” he quipped. “I am a chartered accountant and have a background in financial modelling, so if you are proficient in Excel, you can import and reconcile transactions easily.”
The integration allows every completed mortgage to automatically generate journals and invoices in Books. Builders receive invoices in real time, which improves cash flow and reduces delays.
"Each deal in CRM represents a mortgage. Once a mortgage completes, we recognise revenue but also recognise accrued fees with that transaction. Books allows us to create these journals automatically, ensuring we maintain accurate accounting whilst also invoicing builders in a timely fashion."
BRIAN O'NEILL,
FOUNDER,
Market Mortgage
Benefits and ROI
Zoho Books and CRM automation have significantly reduced manual work, improved accuracy, and saved time.
By leveraging an off-the-shelf, configurable platform, Market Mortgage avoided the cost and delay of building a custom system.
"The biggest benefit was being able to build and configure the system in-house. This meant we not only saved a lot of money on developers, but we could also build with speed. Commercial discussions with lenders move at pace and we needed to be able to change calculations and systems in days, not weeks. Without the flexibility and power of Zoho, we would have been constrained on budget and on time."
BRIAN O'NEILL,
DIRECTOR,
Market Mortgage
Looking forward
O’Neill is exploring AI-driven features to further enhance efficiency.
"What I can see being very powerful is AI monitoring all the analytics of our business. Zoho can see customer tickets in Desk, revenue in Books, leads in CRM—it’s got a holistic picture of the business, and therefore will be easier for AI to deliver deep insights into our business operations."
BRIAN O'NEILL,
DIRECTOR,
Market Mortgage
Reflecting on his Zoho journey, O’Neill said, “I’m so glad I stumbled across Zoho. It’s helped us to run this business efficiently from day one, without needing armies of developers or expensive systems.”
