Connect bets on checking every mortgage file, not a sample

On 12 October 2026 Connect for Intermediaries, a mortgage and protection network, said it is rolling out Curvestone AI’s compliance platform across its more than 350 appointed representative (AR) firms. The stated aim is to review 100% of case files rather than a sample. Curvestone, whose founder and chief executive is Dawid Kotur, automates case-file reviews, financial promotions checks and financial crime controls for mortgage brokers, networks, lenders and wealth advisers.

Liz Syms, Connect’s chief executive, set out the arithmetic in a statement carried by the mortgage trade titles: “As a network, we need to compliance file-check the mortgage and protection cases that all the firms do with a full check taking a human typically two to three hours to complete, depending on the complexity.” She added: “Using Curvestone has brought that down to minutes, allowing our team to spend more time on high-value items such as coaching and training.”

Both figures are Connect’s own. The statement does not say how many files the network handles each month, what share it sampled before or how often a human reviewer disagrees with what the software flags.

Even with those gaps, the rollout and its planned next phase change three things for a network and the firms under it: what the network provides its ARs, where its compliance staff spend their hours and the point in the process at which a case is checked. The third has the most direct effect on the owner of a small advice firm, because it would add a check at the adviser’s desk before the case reaches the network’s.

From a sample to every file

Sample-based checking is the arrangement the announcement sets itself against, and Syms’s own figure suggests why. At two to three hours a file, a reviewer spending an eight-hour day on nothing else would complete two to four full checks. Across more than 350 firms, a network working that way reviews a proportion of cases and relies on the sample to represent the rest.

Full coverage changes what AR membership buys. Every case now gets a review and a record of it. When One Mortgage System (OMS) first announced the Curvestone integration on 28 April 2026, it said each check produces an audit trail. Kotur described it in that release as “100% coverage without adding headcount”.

Syms said the hours saved let the team spend more time on work such as coaching and training.

The CRM becomes the checkpoint

The second change is where the work sits. Connect uses OMS, a customer relationship management (CRM) and case platform, and Curvestone runs inside it. “In addition, the integration with OMS has improved that efficiency even further, as it saves the team having to transfer the information into Curvestone’s own system,” Syms said.

OMS said in April that the integration would shortly be available to all its clients, with bespoke checklists for larger firms and a standard configuration smaller firms could use straight away. It named TMG Mortgage Network and Connect Mortgages among the first clients live. Neal Jannels, managing director of OMS, said at the time: “Compliance should support brokers, not slow them down.”

Kotur framed the Connect deal in the same terms, saying it shows that using Curvestone through a CRM such as OMS can “save both the network and AR valuable time without sacrificing quality and overall compliance”. The effect is that a network’s choice of CRM now carries its compliance process with it, and the check becomes a step in the case workflow that every file passes through.

Connect is not the first network to sign. Curvestone announced deals with Pivotal Growth and with The White Rose Finance Group, a commercial finance network, on 2 December 2025. Curvestone’s announcement of the White Rose deal said reviews would keep “human oversight on all outcomes”.

A pre-check at the adviser’s desk

The third change is the one still to come. “Going forward, the OMS integration will also facilitate the ability for advisers to do pre-checks of their own,” Syms said, before cases go to the compliance team. Mortgage Soup reported that the pre-checks could reduce amendments later in the process.

For an adviser at an AR firm, that would mean running a check before submission rather than waiting for the network’s review. The flags OMS described in April – missing documents, data mismatches, suitability gaps – could then appear while the client file is still with the adviser, rather than after it has gone to the network for review.

Kotur called the current rollout “the first phase of our on-going work with Connect” and said enhancements would be announced “in the coming months as the roll-out finishes”. Neither company has published error rates, the share of flags a human overturns or what the platform costs the network or its ARs. Nor has either said whether a firm’s fees or terms change now that every case is reviewed.

Since 12 October Connect has said it can review every case, inside the system where the case is built, and plans to let advisers run their own pre-checks before submission. The two-to-three-hour manual check is, on Connect’s account, down to minutes; the error and cost figures that would show what the network gained in return have not yet been published.