A financial specialist reached out to share their frustrations with the current mortgage application, explaining that clients often submit fake or inaccurate financial documents such as T1s, T4s and pay stubs in an attempt to qualify for loans. Right now, there’s limited ways for brokers to check these documents early, so they often spend weeks putting together applications, only to have lenders reject them because issues were missed. This wastes time and costs brokers money.

“About 10% to 20% of mortgage applications—roughly 1 in 10—involve falsified financial information”

— CoreLogic

I explored online forums and social media feedback to understand the problem. Common themes emerged: stress from fake or inaccurate documents, time lost on manual checks and a lack of tools. Key insights included:

✖︎ Dealing with Fraud & Rejections
Brokers shared how frustrating it is to spend weeks on a deal, only to have the bank reject it at the last minute because a document was fake or off. It’s not just wasted time but it affects their relationships with clients too.

✖︎ Too Much Manual Work
Right now, checking financial documents is a slow, manual process. There’s a lot of back-and-forth, and even then, things can be missed.

✖︎ Lack of Tools Made for This
Everyone’s just piecing together their own systems — spreadsheets, email threads, side tools but there’s little products out there to verify mortgage documents at ease.

To make sure the product really fit the people who would use it, I created a user persona based on the frustrations and needs that mortgage brokers shared. This helped guide my design choices and kept me focused on what matters most.

Responding to the problems, I moved onto creating low-fidelity wireframes to explore possible solutions. Each frame represents a step to ensure users can easily view applications, add new applicants and upload financial documents.

Drawing from the moodboard, a high‑contrast colour palette was chosen to make document status stand out and direct the user’s attention. The palette keeps the look clean and professional, while bold accent elements such as status and call‑to‑action buttons pop visually. This improves readability and helps users quickly scan for errors.

The goal for the True Files logo was to build a modern, trustworthy and confident brand. I paired a clean wordmark with a simple shield icon to represent protection, security and strength, which were elements that matched True Files’ role in verifying sensitive financial documents.

The solution was a simple, easy‑to‑use interface where each mortgage application appears as its own card, showing a clear summary of all applicants and the financial documents submitted. From this dashboard, brokers can quickly search for clients, start new applications and jump straight into client files.

Inside each application, documents for every applicant are shown in collapsible cards that display live AI analysis results. Each document shows key insights, such as flagged issues or mismatched information, with the level of severity shown in colour (red for critical errors, yellow for warnings and green for passed items). The system points out what needs attention, such as an 'invalid SIN' or 'incorrect address', so brokers can act quickly.

After testing the app, it was discovered that users needed a simple way to report issues directly from the platform. In response, I designed a feedback feature that lets brokers quickly describe and send any problems they encounter. This form, opened by clicking the alert bubble icon, appears next to flagged documents so users can share feedback without interrupting their workflow.