SBLI, a major life insurance provider, hired me to engineer a fully digital, direct-to-consumer application platform. The goal was to transform a traditionally paper-heavy process into a streamlined online experience where users could quote, apply, and pay for their first year of term life insurance in a single session. Beyond development, I partnered with their team as a growth consultant to scale the digital platform, implementing advanced tracking infrastructure to lower customer acquisition costs (CAC).
Challenges
Moving the life insurance application process online presented significant technical and compliance hurdles:
- Instant Underwriting Integration: The system needed to interface with complex third-party underwriting APIs to provide instant decisioning (approved/denied) based on user health data.
- High-Value Payment Processing: Unlike standard e-commerce, collecting the first year’s premium for a life insurance policy required strict adherence to financial regulations and a robust implementation of Stripe APIs.
- Attribution Accuracy: SBLI needed to prove the ROI of their digital spend, requiring precise tracking of high-value conversion events without data loss from browser privacy restrictions.
Solutions
Custom Online Application & Underwriting
- Developed
apply.sbli.com, a custom Angular application powered by a WordPress backend. - Integrated third-party Underwriting APIs to process applicant health data in real-time, allowing immediate policy approval or flagging for manual review.
- Built a secure Stripe integration specifically for the insurance industry, enabling the immediate collection and processing of the first year’s premium upon application submission.
Advanced Analytics & Growth Infrastructure
- Configured Facebook Conversion API (CAPI) and server-side analytics to send "Application Submitted" and "Policy Purchased" events directly from the server to ad platforms.
- Implemented a "full-funnel" tracking strategy that tied offline underwriting results back to online ad clicks, allowing SBLI to optimize ad spend based on policies issued rather than just leads generated.
- Provided strategic growth consulting to align the technical architecture with marketing goals, ensuring the platform could scale with increased ad spend.
Results
Through this digital transformation, SBLI achieved:
- A fully automated "Quote-to-Bind" workflow where users can secure coverage and pay premiums without agent intervention.
- A dramatic improvement in ad spend efficiency (ROAS) due to the accuracy of server-side conversion tracking.
- A robust, custom-built pricing engine and application flow that remained reliable and performant for over 8 years.