Pineapple Financial Inc. (PAPL-A) is taking the first steps to transfer its $13.7-billion mortgage portfolio to the blockchain, a move the CEO of the Toronto-based brokerage says will lead to greater transparency and security as well as new product offerings.

Pineapple announced the launch of its mortgage tokenization platform earlier this month. The company is converting its mortgage records in paper, PDFs and emails into digital assets on Injective's blockchain.

Pineapple had moved over 1,500 originated mortgage files to the traceable digital ledger as of Dec. 15, representing approximately $850 million in funded mortgages. It plans to convert its portfolio of over 29,000 funded mortgages in the coming weeks, with new originations added on an ongoing basis.

“There was a tremendous opportunity for us to be able to utilize on-chain and blockchain solutions to really create transparencies, speed and better access with the world of (traditional finance),” Shubha Dasgupta, CEO and co-founder of Pineapple, said in an interview with RENX Homes.

Pineapple is a brokerage founded in 2016, operating across Canada with a tech-centric mindset.

The mortgage industry is “very ripe" for technological change, Dasgupta said.

Technology is capable of removing obstacles in “creating a more efficient manner of mortgage brokers funding transactions, as well as how they interact with both their clients as well as Canadian mortgage lenders,” he continued.

An example is the company’s online document uploader tool.

Tokenization of mortgage data

Tokenization is the process of representing the ownership of an asset as a token on a blockchain, allowing for transfer and trade, according to PwC. Other companies, such as Toronto-based Radius Financial are utilizing the concept to create asset-backed securities from real estate loans and mortgages, which can be traded on blockchain markets.

With Injective, a finance-focused blockchain, Pineapple is taking the $13.7 billion in mortgages originated since its formation and tokenizing the data points of each record on a public blockchain. The information will be anonymized and hashed for security.

“We were able to move our data from the old ecosystem, the old environments of data, which was penetrable ... into an environment that was much more secured and much more protected,” Dasgupta said.

Referencing cases such as the collapse of iPro Realty or the embezzlement saga of Cartel & Bui, “there has never been a clear, enforceable and accountable measure" of protection by which money is being transferred and how it is being protected, Dasgupta said about the Canadian real estate industry.

Building on blockchain covers those gaps, he said. Tokenizing assets will create traceable data points, enabling a clear audit trail. Companies will be able to follow where the money is going and minimize the risks of identity theft. If there is misrepresentation of documents and data, Pineapple will be able to trace the source, Dasgupta said. Plus, the data in the tokens cannot be manipulated or modified, he added.

Pineapple’s mortgage portfolio will be fully converted to the blockchain early in 2026, Dasgupta expects.

Data marketplace, investment platform to spring out of tokenization

To capitalize on tokenization, Pineapple is developing two commercial products.

The first is the Mortgage Data Marketplace. It is designed to provide institutions access to anonymized loan-level data for market intelligence, improved benchmarking and risk analytics.

Mortgage servicing companies and hedge funds can use the data to create better mortgage options and pricing models, Dasgupta said.

Data privacy and security will be central to the marketplace, he said, with the aim of being “completely anonymized” and “impenetrable.” Pineapple plans to launch the Mortgage Data Marketplace around the new year.

The second is Pineapple Prime. It is a product intended to provide on-chain access to mortgage-backed yield opportunities, connecting on-chain investors to the investments. The release date of Pineapple Prime has yet to be set, Dasgupta said.

Pineapple’s customers are excited about the evolution in the mortgage industry with blockchain, he said. “They just appreciate that people are looking at the changes in the world and how it may affect them tomorrow and trying to address them today.”

The brokerage will be working with the Injective Foundation, the developer of the blockchain, to continue the tokenization of real world assets on blockchain.

“We hope to pioneer a lot of that movement,” Dasgupta said.