Afdal has won Startup of the Year 2026 after finishing first at the Morocco Accelerator Expo Day in Casablanca. The fintech and artificial intelligence company will now represent Morocco at the Plug and Play Winter Summit in Silicon Valley in November.
The company beat 18 other startups at the Expo Day on 15 July after making it through from an initial group of nearly 150 startups in the accelerator programme.
The programme is part of the Digital Morocco 2030 strategy. The Ministry of Digital Transition and Administrative Reform funds the initiative, while Technopark runs it with Silicon Valley-based innovation platform Plug and Play.
Afdal develops AI software that helps banks process home loans faster. Its technology handles millions of possible mortgage combinations, including different loan types, public subsidies, employer benefits, insurance plans and borrower profiles.
The company spent eight years building its mortgage calculation engine before adding an agentic AI system this year.
Customers can speak with the AI through a conversational interface, compare different mortgage options, search for properties, prepare application documents and complete pre-underwriting. The platform can deliver an initial mortgage pre-approval in less than 30 seconds, a process that usually takes weeks.
Afdal also provides software for banks and financial institutions.
Its technology is used by more than 10 Moroccan financial institutions and supports mortgage services in around 1,000 bank branches across the country.
The company has also processed more than one million mortgage simulations through its consumer platform, building one of the largest mortgage datasets in North Africa.
Afdal has a team of six people and has not raised any external equity funding since 2022.
The company will showcase its technology at the Plug and Play Winter Summit in California, where startups meet investors, technology companies and business partners from around the world.
