RBC acquires Pinch Financial to streamline its mortgage process

One of Canada’s big five banks has bought a Toronto-based FinTech startup to grease the wheels of its mortgage process.

Being the founder and CEO of Pinch “has been the greatest privilege of my life.”
Andrew Wells, Pinch

The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) announced on Wednesday that it had acquired Pinch Financial, but did not disclose the transaction’s details. Founded in 2017, Pinch aims to modernize mortgage applications for consumers while improving the sales process for bank mortgage specialists. The startup claims its digital platform—which it sells as a white-label solution for real estate brokerages, mortgage brokerages, and major lenders—can deliver the full mortgage qualification experience in under 10 minutes.

Janet Boyle, RBC’s senior VP of home equity financing, said the acquisition will help the bank deliver more solutions to clients on the path to home ownership. “Pinch’s technology will help us accelerate our digital roadmap to deliver a quicker, more streamlined mortgage experience for Canadians,” Boyle said in a news release.

Pinch founder and CEO Andrew Wells said in a statement that the acquisition marks an opportunity to bring his company’s tech to more Canadians. RBC says it has more than 19 million clients across Canada, the United States, and 27 other countries

Wells and Boyle told Canadian Mortgage Trends that Pinch will operate independently and continue serving non-RBC clients after the acquisition. He added that the bank implemented legally mandated confidentiality measures to separate the handling of non-RBC client data from its own.

BetaKit has reached out to both RBC and Wells for more information on the acquisition.

In a LinkedIn post following the acquisition, Wells recounted how he has loved being the founder and CEO of Pinch for nearly a decade, but that it’s been “manic,” and every moment of glee came with “hiccups” and personal stress.

“It has been the greatest privilege of my life,” Wells said. “But it has also felt like riding a rollercoaster for ten years.”

The acquisition of Pinch follows a recent report from industry group Proptech Collective that found most exit activity in the Canadian proptech sector in 2025 came through mergers and acquisitions. Report lead Stephanie Wood told BetaKit in January that she expected to see “steady ongoing consolidation” in 2026 as more companies seek to buy or sell via such deals amid continually cool public market conditions.

Feature image courtesy Andrew Wells via LinkedIn.