Tell it once.
The deal desk for small New Zealand finance brokers. One intake, every lender, in your client’s language, with a real person on the other end.
Asset and vehicle finance, commercial lending, and personal credit. Built for the brokers the big platforms skipped.
What it does
The hard part of broking is human. The rest is admin.
Handrail takes the admin. Every item below says whether it works today, because a feature list that quietly mixes the two is how software gets a reputation.
- Working now
A deal board that says what is blocking each deal
Every deal by stage, with the blocker computed from the file rather than typed into a notes field by someone who has since forgotten.
- Working now
One screen per deal
Parties, money, and the advice trail on a single page. Every fact carries who supplied it and when, so a figure is never just sitting there unattributed.
- Working now
Stages that cannot be skipped
A deal will not advance without what that stage requires, and the rule lives in the database rather than in a checklist somebody can tick without reading.
- Working now
The file is the audit trail
Every change is written once and cannot be edited afterwards. You do not assemble the record for a review; the record is what you were working in.
- Being built
Affordability from the bank, not from a PDF
One open banking consent instead of three months of statements. Verified income, fixed against discretionary spend. Anything a model derives stays a draft until an adviser accepts it.
- Being built
Who will actually say yes
Lender policy rules evaluated across the panel, showing the knock-outs in plain terms. What was ruled out is recorded alongside what was recommended.
How it works
Three moves, and the paperwork writes itself.
- 01
Take the deal once
The intake asks for what the next stage needs and nothing else. Your client tells their story once, in their language, and is not asked again by the next lender.
- 02
See where it stands and what is missing
The deal file shows the blockers, the consents, the disclosures and the retention clock in one place. Green means it can move.
- 03
Submit, with the trail already written
The pack is assembled in the shape each lender wants. The audit trail was written as you worked, so there is nothing to reconstruct later.
What is built
Where this actually is.
Kept current as things ship. If a line here is out of date, that is a bug and we would like to know.
- Working now
Deal board, deal file, stage gates, audit trail
Built and in use. The compliance rules are enforced by the database, so they hold whether or not the interface remembers to ask.
- Working now
Parties and privacy notification
Built. Where information about somebody is collected from a third party rather than from them, the file tracks whether they have been told, because IPP3A requires it.
- Working now
Multilingual foundations
Built. Locale is an attribute of every record, document and audit entry rather than a switch on the interface. English is live; other languages ship as a registered translator reviews them, never machine translated.
- Being built
Verified affordability through open banking
In progress. Bank data comes through Akahu with a recorded consent. We never ask for a banking password.
- Being built
Lender panel and policy matching
In progress. Structured lender rules, evaluated against the deal, with knock-outs shown rather than hidden.
- Planned
Client portal
Planned. Deliberately small: connect a bank, verify identity, answer the fact-find, and understand what is being signed. A way to reach a human on every screen.
- Planned
Voice as an input method
Planned. Speech fills fields and nothing commits without being read on screen and accepted. No voiceprints and no speaker identification, ever. Te reo Māori speech is blocked until the right licence is in place, which is a decision we are comfortable with.
The beta
We are our own first customer.
Handrail is being used on real deals inside our own brokerage before it is sold to anybody else. That is not a launch tactic. Lending software fails in ways that only appear under real files with real deadlines, and we would rather meet those ourselves.
When the beta opens more widely it will be a small number of brokers, chosen because the work they do is close to what is built rather than close to what is planned. There is no waitlist theatre and no launch date we would have to walk back.
Questions