Finance web development for lenders, brokers and advisers
In financial services the constraint is rarely what you can build. It is what you can defend to a compliance officer, an auditor and eventually a regulator.
What does High10 build for finance?
Finance web development is the design and engineering of websites, calculators, client portals and broker systems for Australian lenders, mortgage brokers, financial advisers and fintechs. It is built around ASIC obligations, AFSL and credit licence requirements, security controls and audit evidence. It suits firms whose compliance review currently blocks every digital change.
Get a fixed written quote- Typical timeline
- 8 to 18 weeks
- What drives cost
- The number of calculators and how complex their logic is, whether a portal with per user permissions is in scope, how many systems must integrate.
- Best for
- Mortgage and finance brokers, lenders, advisers and financial services firms
- You own
- The platform, the client data, the calculation logic and the hosting
- Built with
- Hardened portals, audited calculators, aggregator and CRM integrations
Your handover
Why digital projects stall in financial services
The pattern is familiar to anyone who has worked in the sector. Marketing wants a new site, compliance asks who reviewed the wording, nobody can produce a record of what was approved or when, and the project sits for six weeks. Then a calculator on the existing site is found to be using an interest calculation nobody can explain, written by a developer who left in 2019, with no test coverage and no documentation of the assumptions.
- 01Secure website built from compliance approved content components
- 02Calculators with documented, versioned and tested logic
- 03Comparison rate and disclosure handling built into the interface
- 04Client portal with document checklists and electronic signature
- 05Broker and referral partner views with scoped permissions
- 06Integration with your aggregator, CRM or lending platform
- Australian hosted environment with encryption and audit logging
- Change control process with an approval record per release
- Penetration test results and remediation evidence
The rest of the answer
The root cause is that most finance websites are built as marketing assets and then have compliance applied to them afterwards. That order is backwards and it makes every future change expensive. Built the other way around, with approved content components, versioned calculation logic and a documented change record, compliance review becomes a short check rather than a re examination of the whole system. Firms that make this shift find their release cycle goes from months to days, which is the actual commercial benefit.
Advisers carry disclosure obligations that require documents to be genuinely provided rather than technically linked in a footer.
The regulatory reality behind every page
ASIC regulates financial services and consumer credit, and the licensing position determines what your site may say. An Australian Financial Services Licence or an Australian Credit Licence under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act brings obligations that show up directly in the interface. Credit advertising that mentions a rate generally has to carry a comparison rate with the prescribed warning and assumptions. Design and distribution obligations mean a product's target market determination has to be reflected in how the product is presented rather than contradicted by the marketing.
None of these are things to discover after launch
Mortgage brokers carry a best interests duty, which changes how comparison and recommendation tools may behave, since a tool that steers toward a preferred lender is a real problem. Advisers carry disclosure obligations that require documents to be genuinely provided rather than technically linked in a footer. AUSTRAC reporting entities carry customer due diligence and record keeping requirements that shape onboarding flows. APRA regulated entities carry CPS 234 information security obligations that extend to service providers. Where Consumer Data Right data is used, accreditation and consent handling rules apply. None of these are things to discover after launch.
- Comparison rate and prescribed warnings rendered with the rate, not separately
- Target market determinations reflected in how products are presented
- Disclosure documents delivered and the delivery recorded
- Calculator assumptions documented, versioned and testable
- Customer due diligence captured in the onboarding flow with audit logging
- Change history showing what was approved, by whom and when
How the engagement runs
How a finance project runs
We bring compliance in at the start, not at the review. That single change removes most of the delay from these projects, because the difficult questions get asked while things are still cheap to alter.
- 01Compliance workshopLicensing position, disclosure obligations and what the site may and may not say
- 02Content componentsApproved blocks for rates, disclosures and warnings so pages assemble from reviewed parts
- 03Calculator specificationAssumptions, formulas and worked examples signed off before code is written
- 04Security designAuthentication, encryption, access control, logging and Australian data residency
- 05Build and testAutomated tests on calculation logic, penetration testing on the portal
- 06Compliance sign offA documented review against the specification, recorded with dates and approvers
- 07Launch and change controlA release process where each future change carries its own approval record
Two decisions on your side that keep the project moving
The other discipline is evidence. Every approval, every calculation assumption and every content change gets recorded as it happens, so an audit request months later is answered from the system rather than from an email search. That record is also what lets marketing move quickly, because a change to an approved component is a small review rather than a fresh one.
Calculators that will survive being checked
Rate, repayment, borrowing power and offset calculators are the highest traffic pages on most finance sites and the least examined. We treat them as software rather than as page widgets. The calculation logic lives in one place with the assumptions stated explicitly, covered by automated tests using worked examples your compliance team has signed off, and versioned so you can show precisely what a customer would have seen on any given date.
The disclosure and interface treatment matters as much as the maths
The disclosure and interface treatment matters as much as the maths. Assumptions are shown near the result rather than hidden behind a link, prescribed warnings appear with the figures they qualify, and outputs are described as estimates in language a consumer understands rather than in defensive legal text nobody reads. Results that generate a lead are handled as personal information from the first keystroke, so the collection notice and the consent position are correct before anything is stored. This is usually built as a web application component embedded in the site rather than as a plugin.
Broker portals and the systems behind them
For broking and lending businesses, the client facing site is the smaller half. The larger half is the workflow: an enquiry becomes a lead, a lead becomes an application with documents and identity verification, an application becomes a submission, and a submission has status the client keeps asking about. Most of that runs across an aggregator platform, a CRM, a document store and email, with a person copying between them.
Brokers get one view of the pipeline instead of three
We build the portal layer that closes those gaps. Clients upload documents once against a checklist, complete verification, sign electronically and see status without ringing. Brokers get one view of the pipeline instead of three. Referral partners get their own restricted view of the deals they sent. Behind that we integrate with the aggregator or CRM you already run rather than proposing a replacement, using integration work and CRM automation so nothing depends on someone remembering to copy a field. Where document collection is the bottleneck, document processing can extract and validate statements before a human looks at them.
When we are the wrong choice
We do not provide compliance advice and we will not tell you what your licence permits. We build systems that make your compliance team's decisions enforceable and evidenced, and we work with them, but the judgement is theirs. Any supplier offering to be your compliance authority is selling something they cannot back.
The rest of the answer
We are also the wrong fit for core banking platforms, payment scheme infrastructure, or systems that hold funds directly. That is a specialist regulated engineering domain. And if you are a single broker who needs a credible website, a compliant calculator and a lead flow into your CRM, most of this page is over specified. That is a small, useful project and we will scope it as one. Firms whose obligations are mainly advisory rather than credit related should also read our professional services page, and the underlying protections we apply are covered in our security work.
Everything included
The handover checklist
The practical artefacts your team or your development partner receives when this phase is complete.
- Secure website built from compliance approved content components
- Calculators with documented, versioned and tested logic
- Comparison rate and disclosure handling built into the interface
- Client portal with document checklists and electronic signature
- Broker and referral partner views with scoped permissions
- Integration with your aggregator, CRM or lending platform
- Australian hosted environment with encryption and audit logging
- Change control process with an approval record per release
- Penetration test results and remediation evidence
Not sure which level you need?
A 45 minute call, no cost, no obligation. You leave with a scope, an honest timeline and a fixed written quote.
Questions buyers usually ask
Frequently asked questions
How long does a finance platform project take?
Usually 8 to 18 weeks. A website with compliant calculators and a lead flow sits at the shorter end. A client and broker portal with document workflows, identity verification and aggregator integration takes the longer end. Compliance review cycles are the most common cause of extension, which is why we involve compliance in week one rather than at the end.
What drives the cost of a financial services build?
The number of calculators and how complex their logic is, whether a portal with per user permissions is in scope, how many systems must integrate, and the depth of security testing your obligations require. Penetration testing and formal evidence production are real line items in this sector. We scope them explicitly and send a fixed written quote so nothing appears later as a surprise.
Do you provide compliance advice?
No, and you should be wary of any agency that says it does. We build to the requirements your compliance team or external adviser sets, we ask the questions that surface obligations early, and we produce the evidence that makes review straightforward. The determination of what your licence permits belongs to people who carry that responsibility and hold the relevant qualifications.
How do you secure client financial data?
Encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access with least privilege, audit logging on every record view, multi factor authentication for staff, Australian data residency and a documented incident response process. Portals are penetration tested before launch and the remediation evidence is provided. Where CPS 234 or aggregator security requirements apply, we map controls against them explicitly.
Who owns the platform and the client data?
You do. The repository, the database, the hosting accounts and every third party service are registered to your business. Calculation logic is documented and exportable, which matters because you may need to demonstrate years later what a customer was shown. Any access we hold is yours to withdraw at any point.
Can you integrate with our aggregator or lending platform?
Often, yes. The Australian aggregator and lending platforms vary widely in what they expose, and some are effectively closed. We assess this in the first fortnight and tell you plainly which situation you are in, because a closed platform changes the design toward structured export and a human review step rather than a live two-way sync we cannot deliver.
Related services
Get a fixed written quote for your finance project
Tell us your licensing position, which aggregator or CRM you run and what compliance has blocked so far. We reply within one business day.