In the client's words
Joe Dalton, CEO & Founder of SALT
▶Watch on YouTubeJoe on going from idea to product with Slate — from the SALT engagement. (Earlier Slate-brand video.)
AskSlate's team built SALT — a marine asset-finance platform digitising boat finance across three connected systems. The proof that when a build touches money and regulation, we get it right, and provably so.
The ask
When Joe Dalton, CEO and founder of SALT, set out to digitise boat finance, he came to Slate to build the fintech behind it. Asset finance is more complex than it looks: lending is regulated, most boats sell through dealer networks, and the whole journey — quote, application, agreement, repayments — has to be managed end to end. SALT needed a seamless customer experience and the back-office and dealer systems to run the business behind it.
It's also a domain with no room for “close enough.” SALT operates in an FCA-regulated space — every interest figure, payment schedule and agreement has to be correct, and every step auditable. That's exactly the kind of build AskSlate is built for.
In the client's words
▶Watch on YouTubeJoe on going from idea to product with Slate — from the SALT engagement. (Earlier Slate-brand video.)
What we built
Get a monthly finance quote, apply, upload supporting documents and manage repayments — with data streaming live to the back office in real time.
Where applications become loan agreements. SALT's team manages applicants, vessels, quotes, documentation, dealers and interest rates — on live screens that update without reloads.
A second client-facing system for the boating dealer network to track each application from automated ID verification through to completion, and upload dealer documents.
And beneath the clean front end, the part that has to be exactly right:
Fast, without cutting corners
A small, sharp team took SALT from discovery to a shipped MVP in about six months, inside a regulated domain where most teams would expect years. That's the AskSlate thesis in one project: move fast on the undifferentiated work, and spend the rigor where it actually matters — the calculations, the schedules, the audit trail.
The outcome
The platform didn't just ship — it cleared the regulatory bar and put a financial product in customers' hands. SALT (operating as Salt Money Ltd) is now authorised and regulated by the FCA, with a live boat-finance app on both the App Store and Google Play, actively lending on published terms.
Salt Finance isn't a Shopify project — it's here for one reason. If a tool touches money, inventory valuation, pricing, or anything an auditor might ask about, “mostly works” isn't good enough. Salt is the proof AskSlate builds for correctness and auditability from the first line. It's the same standard behind Histora as a system of record — whether it's a customer's loan schedule or your catalog history.
If your tool touches money, inventory or compliance, that's exactly where our correctness-first engineering earns its keep. Scope it as an AI Ops Sprint.