FundMore

05/29/2026

Your underwriter isn't your bottleneck. Your stack is.

On a typical 72-hour file, genuine underwriting judgment takes about 30 minutes. The rest is waiting for documents to sync, data to reconcile, and conditions to propagate across disconnected systems.

The underwriter isn't slow. The infrastructure around them is.

At FundMore, we built around this insight. When data flows through a single, integrated architecture, invisible queues disappear and cycle times compress by days, not hours.

Stop hiring more people to wait faster. Fix the pipes.

🔗 Read the full piece by FundMore founder Chris Grimes: https://hubs.li/Q04jpPgD0

I was speaking with a mortgage lender last week, and I asked the typical sales question: what is your biggest challenge today?

05/28/2026

15 hours. Then three minutes.

TD's first agentic AI application is in live production for mortgages and HELOCs. Pre-adjudication that used to take roughly 15 hours now averages under three minutes; a ~300x speed-up.

What the agent actually does, per TD's May 21 disclosure:

- Scans client documents
- Calculates income
- Validates against policy
- Performs consent checks
- Verifies income
- Searches for discrepancies
- Auto-generates the underwriter memo

Three reads for everyone outside the Big Six.

1. Underwriting speed is now baseline, not differentiator. Once a TD client gets a three-minute pre-adjudication, the rest of the market recalibrates.

2. The Big Six are scaling a pattern, not shipping a feature. BMO just hired its first head of digital assets and tokenization on May 12. RBC, Scotia, CIBC, and National all run AI labs. Expect production launches across HELOCs, LOCs, and small businesses within two quarters.

3. Mid-market and non-bank lenders do not need a Layer 6; they need a platform. A $20B credit union or a private lender cannot replicate TD's AI research org and should not try. What works is buying the outcome via a platform: agentic underwriting, KYC, document classification, fraud detection, and compliance delivered as a service.

Historical Canadian banking adoption cycles for major Big Six operational moves run 12 to 18 months before becoming table stakes. That clock started on May 21.

Speed is the new disclosure. The institutions that pair last week's regulatory work with this week's underwriting rebuild are the ones the renewal wave hands the market to.

https://hubs.li/Q04j6gSZ0

05/22/2026

The average loan touches 20 systems before it funds, and none of them know about the file as a whole. That gap between good tools is where time, money, and borrowers get lost.

Our CEO, Chris Grimes, breaks down why the industry's "best of breed" approach created an architecture nobody owns and what it actually takes to fix it.

"You don't have a tool problem. You have an architecture problem."

👉 Read the full article: https://hubs.li/Q04hKxx20

05/20/2026

Bill C-29 was tabled April 27 and most coverage treated it as a single new agency. Read against the rest of the 2026 calendar, it is the third leg of a stool that now stands.

Three pillars, one direction of travel:

Supervision: FINTRAC under Bill C-12 (in force March 26). AMPs raised up to 40x. Mandatory compliance agreements. A new Very Serious violation for programs that are not "reasonably designed, risk-based and effective."

Enforcement: the new Financial Crimes Agency under Bill C-29. A dedicated federal investigator; mandate explicitly covers digital assets, designated Criminal Code offences, and PCMLTFA offences.

Prudential: OSFI's April 14 Annual Risk Outlook named non-bank financial institutions the #2 systemic threat. A new Credit Risk Management Guideline is out for consultation through July 29.

The non-bank-lender math is striking:

$401B in non-bank residential mortgage debt; up 19% since 2020.

65,233 private mortgages in Ontario alone, worth $32B.

Delinquency rates running roughly 11x the headline bank figure.

Over 50% of Canadian mortgages renewing between Jan 2026 and end of 2027.

Three readings worth taking forward:

1. The opacity argument is closing. Procedural rigour is supervisable. Conduct in digital assets is investigable. Credit-risk practices are about to be examinable. The three pillars overlap on every non-bank lender.

2. Effectiveness is the next examination axis. Programs that exist on paper but cannot produce evidence of outcomes are formally exposed.

3. Compliance infrastructure is now a competitive moat. Bank-grade tooling used to be the price of being federally regulated. Under the new stack it is the price of operating.

That last point is the gap FundMore Fathom is built to close: a freemium underwriting, CRM, and compliance platform purpose-built for private lenders, MICs, and alternative mortgage originators. Same infrastructure powering Canada's leading lenders ($60B+ in applications processed), no upfront cost. Waitlist live now; public beta summer 2026.

Full breakdown on the FundMore blog: https://hubs.li/Q04hfQx60

05/19/2026

Our CEO, Chris Grimes, just published a piece that is worth a read for anyone building or leading teams right now.

The real shift isn't jobs being replaced, it's friction being replaced. The five minutes here, twenty minutes there, the endless plumbing — all fill up the days of your smartest people.

Chris shares how FundMore tackled this head-on and what it means for the companies that figure it out first.

"Stop counting jobs. Start counting friction."

👉 Read the full article: https://hubs.li/Q04h3Lf_0

Last Tuesday at 7:30 am, I opened my laptop to a single document.

05/13/2026

A $42,075 FINTRAC penalty against VersaBank moved past most news cycles inside a day. For Canadian AML and risk leaders, that would be the wrong place to leave it.

On May 5, FINTRAC published the case publicly. Two violations: failing to keep written compliance policies current and approved by a senior officer; failing to take special measures for high-risk clients. Neither finding alleges money laundering. Both are program hygiene.

The case was assessed under the prior framework. Five weeks earlier, on March 26, Bill C-12 received Royal Assent and reset the AMP regime:

Minor violation max: $1,000 to $40,000.
Serious: $100,000 to $4,000,000.
Very Serious: $500,000 to $20,000,000.

Cumulative cap for entities: greater of $20M or 3% of prior-year gross global revenue.

All compliance-program violations are now Very Serious. A new offence covers programs that are not "reasonably designed, risk-based and effective." Effectiveness is examinable in its own right.

Three readings worth taking forward:

1. Procedural rigour is public-penalty material. FINTRAC will pursue a Schedule I bank for stale policies and weak high-risk client measures, not just substantive AML findings.

2. The dollar figure is disconnected from the fact pattern. The same conduct under C-12 ceilings sits inside Very Serious territory; the math changes by orders of magnitude.

3. Effectiveness is the next examination axis. Programs that exist on paper but cannot produce evidence of outcomes (threshold tuning, high-risk treatment artifacts, STR quality) are formally exposed. Below-peer STR volumes can, on their own, trigger effectiveness scrutiny.

VersaBank is the last datapoint from the legacy regime and the first signal of where the new one is calibrated. The institutions that internalize that early will avoid being the first datapoint inside the new framework.

Full breakdown on the FundMore blog:

The April 28 Spring Economic Update 2026 layered four parallel financial-services initiatives into one package: a $25B Canada Strong Fund, $7B+ in accelerated CMHC financing, the Financial Crimes Agency, and Bank Act FRFI flexibility. Read as a single story, it is the most consequential federal poli...

05/07/2026

Your P&L is lying to you.

The biggest cost in your company isn't on any line item. It's the friction between your systems, your processes, and your people's attention. Chris Grimes calls it organizational drag — and most operators are bleeding from it without knowing.

Three invisible debts compound on each other:

Tech debt — the workarounds instead of fixes.
Process debt — the approvals, reports, and rituals nobody can explain.
Attention debt — the meetings, pings, and context switches that drain the only resource that actually generates value in a knowledge company.

Each layer feeds the next. Tech debt creates workarounds. Workarounds become a process. A process demands coordination. Coordination eats attention. And without unbroken attention, nobody has the focus to fix the systems creating the drag.

The trap: the drag consumes the very capacity you'd need to eliminate it.

Stop asking where the money is going. Start asking where the time is going. Then put a number on it.

This week on Kill The Stack, Chris lays out an operational audit any leader can run on Monday morning.

Read the full diagnosis:

Last month, I reviewed our quarterly numbers.

05/06/2026

Most coverage of the April 28 Spring Economic Update treated it as a fiscal story. For Canadian lenders, that misses the point.

Four parallel financial-services initiatives moved on the same day:

Capital: $25B Canada Strong Fund; equity-focused arm's-length Crown corp; retail investment product to follow.

Housing: $7B+ in accelerated CMHC financing; targeted GST relief; amended mortgage insurance rules.

Crime: Financial Crimes Agency Act tabled; $352.7M over 5 years; digital assets explicitly in scope.

Bank Act: FRFI investment regulations posting Spring 2026; national security review of foreign bank stakes; stablecoin and tokenized-asset consultation opens.

Read as one package, this is the most coordinated rewrite of the Canadian financial-services operating environment since the post-2008 Bank Act revisions.

Three implications for lending executives:

1. Origination volume gets a fiscal tailwind. The Bank of Canada held at 2.25% for a fourth time on April 29; fixed mortgage rates climbed 25-40 bps anyway. Ottawa is using fiscal levers where monetary policy cannot help. The throughput question is no longer hypothetical.

2. AML and digital-assets risk just got teeth. The FCA is not a FINTRAC rebrand; it is a dedicated investigative body with prosecution support and digital-asset authority. Supervisory expectations will tighten ahead of full agency operations.

3. Bank Act flexibility opens the partnership window. New FRFI investment authority lets federally regulated lenders take strategic positions in fintechs and embedded-finance platforms. The institutions who move first lock in the partnerships that define the next decade.

Past economic updates moved one lever; this one moved four. The lenders who treat the package as a coordinated reset will outperform the ones who treat each pillar as a separate compliance memo.

Full breakdown on the FundMore blog: https://hubs.li/Q04fHtG30

05/05/2026

The stack isn't a strategy. It's scar tissue.
Most lenders stop counting their tools around fifteen.

Chris Grimes broke down what every extra tool actually costs. Three takes:

1. Take the best engine from a Rolls-Royce, the best transmission from a Mercedes, the best battery from a Tesla. You don't get a car. You get a parts problem. Your lending stack is that car.

2. Every tool-to-tool handoff is a place something can break. None of it shows up as a line item. All of it adds up to one of the most expensive things you're paying for.

3. Your ops team isn't processing loans. They're holding the stack together. That's not operations. It's maintenance disguised as productivity.

Full diagnosis: https://hubs.li/Q04fyxJs0

How many tools does it take to close a mortgage?

05/04/2026

The most expensive thing in your company is invisible.
You won't find it on the P&L.

Chris Grimes kicked off Kill The Stack with a diagnosis.

1. A file sits "pending" for three days. The actual decision took twenty minutes. The rest is waiting between systems that were never built to talk.

2. Companies buy better tools while the architecture underneath gets worse. People become middleware.

3. The workarounds nobody questions. The meetings that exist because no system surfaces the information. Five-year-old patches that calcified into process.

Full diagnosis: https://hubs.li/Q04fbkNR0

The structural problems hiding inside your company