2026 Eastern Award winners

Risk taker. Determined to succeed. Malik Yacoubi takes chances and transforms industries.

Malik had successfully founded, led and sold two technology companies when he saw a market gap: Canadians were struggling to finance homes and properties. He wanted to ease that struggle.

Starting from scratch, Malik left a full-time leadership role and teamed with cofounders to start nesto, a digital mortgage broker. They set out to enable Canadians with a simpler mortgage financing experience. That was in 2018.  

Banks were initially skeptical. Brokers saw nesto as a disruptive potential threat to existing business models. Malik persevered regardless. He focused obsessively on the product, forged deep partnerships within the mortgage ecosystem and built nesto into a fully integrated lender (with its own origination, underwriting and servicing) and mission-critical SaaS vendor. Expanding strategically in 2024, nesto acquired a much larger mortgage financing company, growing the team by 1,000 people.

With $73 billion in residential and commercial mortgages under administration, nesto is now a leading Canadian provider of mortgage technology and financing solutions. This pioneering company is trusted by some of the country’s most prominent financial institutions. 

Still, Malik believes there’s always room to go faster and do better. His pursuit of bold, uncomfortably ambitious goals has transformed an entire industry. He’s not done yet.