Strengthening cash management to support Together's growth
Specialist property lender Together has continued its programme of finance and treasury modernisation to support its long-term growth strategy. As part of that transformation, the business implemented AccessPay’s Cash Management hub to improve efficiency, strengthen financial operations and enhance liquidity management through automated daily cash sweeping.
About Together
Manchester-based Together is a specialist property lender with a loan book of more than £8 billion and over 850 employees. The business provides secured property finance across both commercial and residential lending.
In the residential market, Together supports a broad range of borrowers, including self-employed customers and those with more complex income profiles, as well as prime customers whose circumstances may fall outside standard criteria.
Its product range includes personal mortgages, secured loans, bridging loans, commercial mortgages, buy-to-let mortgages, auction finance and development finance. Together’s commercial finance offer serves large-scale landlords, property developers, businesses and SMEs.
As part of its broader modernisation agenda, Together was looking for a financial technology partner that understood the specialist lending environment and could provide a reliable, flexible platform for managing payments and cash operations.
Robin Wright, Together’s Group Finance Director, led the finance and treasury workstream for the implementation of AccessPay’s Cash Management hub.
The challenge
When Together began this phase of its finance transformation in 2023, it was funding between two and three thousand mortgages each month. The group operated a broad bank account structure across collections, funding and other treasury activities, which required regular movement of cash to ensure liquidity was in the right place at the right time.
At the time, parts of this activity still relied on manual processing and offline controls, meaning a high volume of transactions had to be managed by the finance team each month.
Together identified several limitations in that approach:
- Manual data entry increased the scope for human error and required additional review and checking activity.
- Offline workflows reduced visibility, making approvals, auditability and process oversight more time-consuming.
- Over time, manual processes can create unnecessary dependency on individual knowledge and experience.
- As transaction volumes grow, manual processes become less efficient and harder to scale consistently.
Once the operational burden of those manual processes was clear, the case for further digitisation of finance was straightforward.
We were managing significant cash movements across the group, and it was clear that a more automated approach would improve efficiency and better support future growth. The board could see that digitising these processes would strengthen the operating model without relying on additional manual intervention.
With board support, Together moved ahead with the next stage of modernising its financial systems.
The RFP
The project began with a review of Together’s existing finance processes, including bank account management, reconciliation and payments.
Together then ran a request for proposal (RFP) process for a cash management platform that could centralise, automate and manage cash across multiple accounts more effectively.
With a detailed set of business and functional requirements, Robin engaged with a range of providers during the selection process. AccessPay stood out for the quality of its engagement and its ability to align with Together’s requirements.
The AccessPay team was responsive throughout the RFP process and engaged well with the detail of our requirements. Their proximity was also a positive, given the importance our board and shareholders place on supporting the local community.
The core functionality of AccessPay’s Cash Management hub, including bank connectivity, payment processing and workflow capability, matched what Together was looking for.
Together also worked with AccessPay on requirements specific to its operating model, including cash sweeping rules designed to move funds between selected accounts automatically at the end and beginning of each day.
Automated sweeping is materially more efficient than managing the process manually, and it gives us a more consistent way to control cash movements. AccessPay worked closely with us to shape the solution around our requirements.
The results
Together adopted a phased go-live approach, with non-core accounts and supporting treasury activity going live first in March 2025.
The implementation released meaningful finance capacity from manual cash management activity, allowing the team to focus more time on higher-value work.
By removing manual steps from key processes, Together improved efficiency, enhanced visibility and strengthened control across its cash management activities.
The change has also helped ensure the finance operating model is better placed to support continued growth without a corresponding increase in manual workload.
Manual processes can only take you so far. By systemising and automating key activities, we have built a model that is more scalable and better able to support the business as it grows.
Over the same period, Together’s mortgage funding volumes increased by circa 50% per month on average.
The business has continued to grow over that period, and automation has helped ensure our finance processes can support that growth more effectively. Without that change, we would likely have needed additional operational resource to manage the same level of activity.
Next steps
AccessPay now forms part of the foundation for Together’s ongoing finance and treasury transformation, and the platform is expected to continue supporting the business as that journey progresses.
Transformation programmes always require close collaboration between business and supplier. From the RFP stage through to implementation, AccessPay was responsive and engaged, and that made a real difference to the delivery process.