What Pine does

Pine is a Toronto-based, venture-backed digital mortgage platform founded in 2021 by Justin Herlick (CEO) and Jonathan Shih (CTO). The company operates a fully online application and approval workflow at apply.pine.ca, supported by dedicated mortgage advisors who handle a hybrid self-serve plus assisted experience. Pine's product set spans purchase mortgages, pre-approval with 120-day rate lock, refinance, mortgage switching, and HELOC, offered on a commission-free basis with rates starting around 3.45–4.29% on standard fixed terms. The core technology stack includes a digital application platform, proprietary home valuation AI, and Pine AI — an AI advisory layer used for rate optimization, proactive customer monitoring, and accelerated application processing. The platform is licensed across six Canadian provinces (Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland) under Pine Canada Financial Corporation.

Pine's business model is centered on mortgage origination economics: the company earns the interest rate spread between rates offered to customers and its funding costs, plus transactional revenue from real estate services introduced via the October 2023 acquisition of Properly. Distribution runs through Pine's direct digital platform, phone-based advisor support, a tiered referral program offering up to $1,000 to both referrer and referee, and a strategic partnership with Wealthsimple that delivers embedded mortgage services and cashback benefits to Wealthsimple customers. In 2025, the company launched Pine Homes, extending the platform into home search and discovery, and Pine AI, which underpins the advisor workflow. To date Pine has raised approximately C$55 million across seed, Series A, and follow-on rounds from Greylock, Inovia Capital, Intact Ventures, and other investors, and has cumulatively funded $2B+ in mortgages across 100,000+ Canadian clients, with $1B+ CAD in mortgages under administration for 55,000+ families as of mid-2025.

The company's customer base is horizontally distributed across Canadian individual homebuyers, with no disclosed enterprise or commercial mortgage segment. Its management team combines fintech operating experience — notably from Blend (CEO and CFO backgrounds) and consumer engineering experience from Facebook, Instabase, and Snapchat (CTO background) — with a leadership group that includes a COO, principal brokers, and dedicated content and growth marketing functions. Pine positions itself as a one-stop digital homeownership platform spanning financing, search, advisory, and AI-assisted guidance, with multi-product roadmap signals across both mortgage and real estate services.

Name

Pine

Legal name

Pine Canada Financial Corporation

Website

https://pine.ca

Company type

Private

Founded year

2021

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

Pine is a Toronto-based digital-first mortgage platform serving Canadian homebuyers with online applications, AI-assisted advisors, and commission-free pricing. Following its 2023 acquisition of Properly, it expanded into real estate search and advisory under Pine Homes.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Digital Mortgage Lending

NAICS

Mortgage and Nonmortgage Loan Brokers (522310)

SIC

Loan Brokers (6163), Mortgage Bankers & Loan Correspondents (6162)

akta.pro primary industry

Consumer Direct / Online Mortgage Origination (FSALAAAB)

akta.pro secondary industry

Mortgage Comparison, Marketplace & Rate-Shopping Platforms (FSALABAJ)

Keywords

• Digital mortgage lending
• Mortgage origination platform
• Home equity lending
• Mortgage refinancing services
• Real estate brokerage

Headquarters

HQ city

Toronto

HQ country

Canada

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Mortgage Origination/Lending: Pine originates mortgages for Canadian homebuyers, earning revenue through the interest rate spread between what they offer customers and their funding costs. The company acts as a digital mortgage lender and broker, providing competitive rates to consumers.
2. Real Estate Services: Following the 2023 acquisition of Properly, Pine expanded into real estate search, advisory, and other homeownership tools through Pine Homes platform, providing additional service revenue streams.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Pine originates and arranges residential mortgages for Canadian consumers through a digital-first platform that supports fully online applications, pre-approvals, rate locks, refinancing, and mortgage switching. Following its 2023 acquisition of Properly, Pine also provides home search, real estate advisory, and home valuation tools through the Pine Homes platform. Mortgage products include purchase mortgages, pre-approvals, refinances, switches, and home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), with operations licensed across multiple Canadian provinces under FSRA.

Product overview

Pine is a Canadian digital mortgage fintech offering a unified homeownership platform. The core product is the Pine Mortgage Platform, a digital-first system for applying, getting pre-approved, and closing mortgages. The product portfolio includes Pine Homes (home search and discovery, launched after the 2023 acquisition of Properly), Pine AI (AI-powered advisory and market scanning), Home Valuation tools, Affordability Calculator, and various mortgage products (Purchase, Pre-Approval, Refinance, Switch, HELOC). The company positions itself as a one-stop-shop for Canadian homeownership, combining mortgage financing with real estate search and advisory services, backed by AI technology to reduce costs and accelerate processing.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Pine Homes: Home search platform providing real estate listings, property valuation, and homeownership tools expanded beyond mortgages into real estate search, advisory, and other homeownership services.
• Pine AI

Products and services

• Pine Mortgage Platform Digital-first mortgage origination platform for Canadian consumers that enables online applications, pre-approvals (with a 120-day rate lock), refinancing, and mortgage switching. Combines a fully online self-serve application with dedicated mortgage advisors and AI-assisted processing, with approvals in as little as 24 hours and closings in as little as 10 days. Available to individual homebuyers across Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland under FSRA brokerage licensing.
• Pine Homes Home search and real estate brokerage platform for Canadian consumers, offering property listings, neighborhood information, real estate advisory, and access to Pine Realtors and brokers. Launched on the foundation of the 2023 Properly acquisition to expand Pine's homeownership offering beyond mortgage origination into home discovery and transaction services.
• HELOC Home Equity Line of Credit product for Canadian homeowners seeking to access accumulated home equity through Pine's digital-first origination process.

Quantifiable outcome

• Save up to $35,100 over 5-year mortgage term compared to big banks
• +4 more outcomes

Named customers4 records

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability6 records

Feature3 records

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• WealthsimplemajorGTM or Marketing PartnerStrategic partnership offering integrated mortgage services. Wealthsimple refers customers to Pine for mortgages, and Pine offers cashback benefits to Wealthsimple customers. The partnership appears on login pages and is marketed as a joint offering.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• nesto: Montreal-based Canadian digital mortgage lender and brokerage operating with a similar cloud-based platform model. nesto is the closest direct competitor to Pine, both offering fully online mortgage applications, multiple lender integrations, and AI-assisted rate shopping for Canadian homebuyers.
• True North Mortgage: Canadian mortgage brokerage operating a call-center/digital hybrid model with competitive rate offerings. True North Mortgage is one of the largest independent Canadian brokerages and a direct competitor in the rate-shopping brokerage segment.
• Wealthsimple: Canada's largest independent online investment platform with 1.5M+ customers that has entered mortgages through the Pine partnership. Wealthsimple is both a partner and potential competitor; its entry threatens to either disintermediate Pine or strengthen the channel.

Emerging players

• Borrowell: Canadian fintech offering free credit scores, loans, and now mortgage products through a digital platform. Borrowell represents a newer entrant into the Canadian digital mortgage space with established brand recognition from credit monitoring, partially overlapping with Pine's target customer.
• KOHO Financial: Canadian digital banking and fintech platform offering prepaid cards, credit building, and financial products. KOHO is an adjacent competitor in Canadian digital financial services, sharing a similar digital-first millennial customer base.

Broad incumbents

• Questrade: Canada's largest independent online brokerage offering mortgages, savings, and investment products through a digital platform. Questrade represents an established Canadian fintech with overlapping digital-first customer base in homeownership-adjacent financial services.
• Dominion Lending Centres: Canada's largest national mortgage brokerage network with thousands of brokers across the country. While more traditional in model, DLC's scale and broker network make it a structural competitor for mortgage origination share.
• Rocket Mortgage: US-based digital mortgage market leader owned by Rocket Companies. While operating in a different geography, Rocket pioneered the digital-first direct-to-consumer mortgage model that Pine is emulating in Canada, making it a useful strategic benchmark.
• Better.com: US digital mortgage lender that scaled rapidly on a similar tech-forward, no-commission model to Pine. Better.com is a useful international comparable in digital mortgage economics, though it operates in the US market.

Others

• MCAN Mortgage: Canadian mortgage investment corporation and non-bank mortgage originator providing funding and securitization services. MCAN represents the wholesale funding ecosystem that Pine relies on for mortgage origination capital.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/pine_canada
• Facebookfacebook.com/PineCanada
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/pine-financial

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles4 records

Subsidiaries1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds3 records

Investors13 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A1 record

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Pine