How We Cut Quote Processing from 3 Days to 5 Seconds

Stream's mission is to make life insurance a smarter financial tool.

Its flagship product, the Stream Plan, helps high-income earners use bank financing to fund cash-value life insurance. This approach provides benefits like tax-free retirement income, compounded savings, and protection from market losses, all through a simple and transparent process.

In this article, we'll dive into:

• the challenge

• the solution

• the implementation process (including discovery, design, and development)

• outcome

• and key takeaways

What was slowing Stream down, and how could they fix it?

Stream faced two key challenges in its mission: scaling its operations and enhancing the user experience.

First, their quoting process took up to three days, causing delays for agents and slowing down the client onboarding process.

Second, IMOs demanded a modern technical solution to support Stream's growth by attracting more agents and expanding their client base.

To address these challenges, Stream needed a robust, scalable platform that could streamline quoting in real-time and provide a seamless, tech-driven experience for all users.

We built an end-to-end scalable insurance solution in 2.5 months

In 2.5 months, we have developed a comprehensive insurance portal to streamline the entire application process for agents and clients, showcasing our expertise in building end-to-end solutions.

The portal supports user roles like Admin, Agent, and Client and handles everything from onboarding and quoting to enrollment and policy management. Key features include real-time quoting with PDF generation, seamless API integration with the insurance carrier National Life Group, and robust user management.

The solution meets critical non-functional requirements like HIPAA compliance and integrates SendGrid for email management. This project highlights our ability to deliver scalable, compliant, and user-friendly software tailored to the financial services industry.

Implementation Process

Our implementation process was divided into three key phases: Discovery, Design, and Development.

1. Product Discovery

The first phase, product discovery, was about understanding Stream's business needs, the insurance industry, and the challenges agents and other users faced. The product manager worked closely with the team to identify pain points and determine what needed change.

We held several workshops with founders to map out Stream's business model, target users, and workflows. This included prioritizing user segments based on their size and importance. We also looked at the tools they were using, like Excel, fillable PDFs, and Dynamo for CRM, and reviewed the steps in their enrollment process, which was messy and full of manual tasks.

Most of the discovery work happened at the start of the project. The product manager, designer, and tech lead worked together to ensure the solution was realistic, minimized risks and filled any gaps in understanding. By the end of this phase, we had a clear plan: reduce the quote processing time and build a scalable solution that could handle thousands of users and agents. We also knew we had the right team, tools, and plan to move forward.

2. Product Design

The design phase, led by our designer Tina, focused on creating a user-friendly experience. Tina started by setting up the design system, building components, and creating wireframes and a prototype in Figma. Fortunately, Stream's branding was already done by Studio.io, so we could focus on designing screens and user flows.

Design work kicked off a few weeks after the project started and overlapped with development by about two weeks. It's worth mentioning that design isn't a one-and-done process; we continued refining and adding to the designs as the project progressed.

We began with basic screens like sign-up, login, and profiles. From there, we added features for managing users and quotes, creating the quick estimator (using Chart.js), and designing the quote PDFs. These needed to be reviewed and approved by the client. Later in the project, we focused on enrollment and policy management designs to complete the experience.

3. Product Development

The development phase turned the ideas and designs into a working solution. Our three-person engineering team handled everything from setting up the AWS infrastructure (ensuring it was HIPAA-compliant) to integrating with NLG's APIs. They also created multiple environments (development, staging, production) and selected the right tools to make the portal reliable and scalable.

The team faced several challenges, like ensuring medical records were stored securely and managing the complex dependencies between user roles and signed documents in the enrollment process. Despite these hurdles, the team delivered the end-to-end insurance portal in just 2.5 months! We're especially proud of how quickly and efficiently this solution came together.

One of the standout features was a system that automatically recognized multiple roles (client, agent, admin) tied to a single email address, simplifying role management.

What impact did our solution deliver?

In just 14 weeks of discovery, design, and development, we delivered key results for Stream founders despite the challenges:

• Reduced quote processing time from 3 days to just 5 seconds.

• Built a scalable insurance portal that handles the entire underwriting process.

• Helped Stream attract major IMOs and unlock new distribution channels for growth.

This highlights how the project successfully addressed Stream's main goals and set them up for future scalability.

Key Takeaways

This case study highlights how we helped Stream overcome critical challenges and achieve impressive results in just 14 weeks. By reducing quote processing time from 3 days to 5 seconds, building a scalable insurance portal, and enabling Stream to attract major IMOs, we demonstrated our ability to deliver tailored, efficient, and innovative tech solutions. Whether you're looking to streamline processes, scale your operations, or unlock new growth opportunities, our expertise can help you achieve your goals.

If you’re ready to streamline operations and scale efficiently, let’s get in touch to see how the right technology can drive real results for your business.