CASE STUDY
HAYDOCK FINANCE
X LUCERO
Haydock Finance — one of the UK's leading independent asset finance providers — put AI into production in four months and doubled proposal throughput without giving up human oversight.
2x
IN THE FIRST 6 MONTHS
Monthly proposals handled with Lucero.
100% of inbound broker proposals at Haydock have flowed through Lucero since October 2025 — one of the first UK specialist lenders to put AI into production for new business.
4 months
from kick-off to go-live.
THE CHALLENGE
MANUAL DATA ENTRY WAS CONSTRAINING SPEED OF GROWTH.
Haydock faced the bottleneck every specialist lender knows. New business proposals arrived from brokers by email with multiple attachments — application forms, bank statements, equipment quotes — all in different formats, and sometimes even hand-written.
A team member had to open every attachment, find the necessary information, and re-key it into Haydock's core lending platform. Repetitive, error-prone, and the single biggest constraint on scaling new business volumes.
THE SOLUTION
01
02
03
04
LUCERO DOES THE HEAVY LIFTING. THE TEAM STAYS IN CONTROL.
Lucero connects directly to Haydock’s email inbox (Outlook) and its core lending platform (Odessa).
When a new proposal email arrives, Lucero automatically:
Analyses and classifies the inbound email and every attachment, regardless of format
Extracts the data into a structured proposal, flagging any fields it isn’t fully confident in
Presents a side-by-side review screen for the user to quickly and easily check the extracted data
Pushes the structured proposal data into the core lending platform once the user has approved it
01
02
03
04
SAME TEAM.
TWICE THE THROUGHPUT.
A FRACTION OF THE TIME PER PROPOSAL.
97%
2x
65%
THE OPERATIONAL IMPACT
SAME TEAM.
TWICE THE THROUGHPUT.
A FRACTION OF THE TIME PER PROPOSAL.
65%
faster proposal processing
faster proposal processing
~20 min → ~6 min on average
~20 min → ~6 min on average
2x
monthly proposals handled
monthly proposals handled
Same team. more throughput
97%
Including handwritten forms
data extraction accuracy
data extraction accuracy
Same team. More throughput.
Same team. More throughput.
Including handwritten forms
THE TIMELINE
KICK-OFF TO FULL SCALE IN UNDER A YEAR.
JUN - AUG ‘25
First broker proposals processed end-to-end through Lucero.
SEP ‘25
Discovery and design with Haydock team.
MAY ‘25
Build
Kick-off
Discovery and design with Haydock team.
Kick-off
OCT ‘25
Live in production
First broker proposals processed
end-to-end through Lucero.
100% inbound
OCT ‘25
Every new business proposal flowing through Lucero.
100% inbound
Every new business proposal flowing through Lucero.
MAR ‘26
JUN - AUG ‘25
Build
Lucero integrated to Outlook and Odessa, and tested thoroughly for accuracy.
SEP ‘25
MAR ‘26
Supporting 30% business growth
Dramatic increase in volume of proposals in Q1 2026 that Haydock can handle, materially supported by Lucero.
Supporting 30% business growth
Dramatic increase in volume of proposals in Q1 2026 that Haydock can handle, materially supported by Lucero.
MAY ‘25
"The time savings that we've seen have been very significant. We're really encouraged by that."
CHRISTIAN BROUGH
Head of Platform Solutions, Haydock Finance
WHAT’S DIFFERENT
HUMAN-IN-THE-DRIVING-SEAT.
NOT AUTONOMOUS AGENTS.
30%
Lucero is very intentionally not an autonomous AI agent. It is built with structured, auditable AI-powered workflows designed specifically for the asset finance industry.
This allows it to avoid the significant risks with hallucination and errors that AI agents typically suffer from, and which often prevent AI pilots from getting into production.
Lucero keeps the human firmly in control of all actions and decisions - it’s simply removing the manual admin work, allowing teams to focus on higher value work that grows the business.
30%
Business growth at Haydock in Q1 2026
materially supported by the additional originations capacity Lucero unlocks.
RESPONSIBLE AI
AUDITED. EXPLAINABLE. ENTERPRISE-GRADE.
✓ Every AI suggestion, user decision, and change is captured in a clear audit trail.
✓ Human approval is required before any downstream action - dramatically de-risking deployments.
✓ Enterprise grade deployment on Google Cloud - no customer data used for model training, ever.
✓ Enterprise-grade deployment on Google Cloud. No customer data used for model training, ever.
✓ Selected for the FCA AI Spotlight programme under Compliance and Automation.
materially supported by the additional originations capacity Lucero unlocks.
YOUR TURN
SEE LUCERO IN ACTION
A 30-minute demo with the team building Lucero. We'll show you how Lucero works