Robert Chen, CFO of a mid-sized premium finance company, meets Sarah Martinez, Operations Director at a competitor firm, at an industry conference to discuss operational challenges.
The Conference Connection
Sarah Martinez: Robert, I've been meaning to talk to you. Word is your company completely transformed operations last year. Processing times cut in half?
Robert Chen: Sarah, good to see you. Yes, it's been a journey. We went from drowning in manual processes to running at scale.
Sarah Martinez: That's exactly where we are now—drowning. Premium calculations, credit assessments, document management... our team is buried.
Robert Chen: That was us eighteen months ago. Every step was manual, errors were constant, and we couldn't scale without proportionally adding headcount.
The Pain Points
Sarah Martinez: What was your biggest operational bottleneck?
Robert Chen: Honestly? Everything touched everything else. Premium calculations fed into credit assessment, which affected document requirements, which delayed funding. One hiccup cascaded through the whole process.
Sarah Martinez: Our underwriting alone takes three to four days per application. By the time we approve, half the agents have gone to competitors.
Robert Chen: We were at two days. Still too slow. In premium finance, speed is competitive advantage. Agents want answers fast.
Sarah Martinez: And the error rate?
Robert Chen: Don't get me started. Manual data entry, people copying numbers between systems, transcription mistakes. We were catching errors that had made it through to funded deals.
Finding Big0
Sarah Martinez: So what did you do?
Robert Chen: We built a full-stack platform with Big0. Not just automation of individual steps—a complete reimagining of how premium financing workflows should work.
Sarah Martinez: Custom development? That sounds expensive and risky.
Robert Chen: The alternative was more expensive. We calculated our hidden costs—staff time on manual processes, error correction, lost deals from slow turnaround. The platform paid for itself in eighteen months.
Sarah Martinez: What does the platform actually do?
Robert Chen: Everything. Premium calculations automated based on policy data. Credit assessment integrated with Experian's API—real-time decisions. Document generation through DocuSign. Payment scheduling automated. Real-time portfolio analytics.
The Technical Reality
Sarah Martinez: How did they handle integration with your existing systems?
Robert Chen: That was impressive. We had legacy systems nobody wanted to touch. Big0 built connectors that pulled data from everywhere—policy administration, accounting, CRM—and unified it into a single platform.
Sarah Martinez: What's the tech stack?
Robert Chen: NestJS with TypeScript on the backend, Next.js frontend, PostgreSQL database, Redis for caching. Deployed on Google Cloud with Kubernetes. Modern, scalable, secure.
Sarah Martinez: Did your team have to manage all that complexity?
Robert Chen: That's the thing—they abstracted the complexity away. Our team works with intuitive dashboards and workflows. The technical sophistication is invisible to daily users.
The Results
Sarah Martinez: What numbers can you share?
Robert Chen: Ninety-five percent of our processes are automated now. Underwriting that took two days takes under a day. Error rates down 40%. And we're handling three times the volume with the same team.
Sarah Martinez: The underwriting improvement—how did they speed that up so dramatically?
Robert Chen: Streamlined the whole workflow. Credit assessment happens automatically when an application comes in. Document requirements are generated based on credit tier. Approval routing happens without manual handoffs. What used to be sequential steps now happens in parallel.
Sarah Martinez: What about compliance? Our auditors would have concerns about automation.
Robert Chen: Built-in audit trails. Every decision is logged, every document timestamped, every approval recorded. When auditors come, we can show them exactly what happened at every step. Better compliance than our manual processes ever achieved.
The Transformation
Sarah Martinez: How did your team adapt?
Robert Chen: That surprised me—better than expected. The manual work they were doing was tedious. Nobody went into finance to copy numbers between spreadsheets. Now they focus on complex cases, client relationships, strategic decisions.
Sarah Martinez: Job satisfaction improved?
Robert Chen: Significantly. People are using their expertise instead of doing data entry. The platform handles routine cases; humans handle exceptions and relationships.
Sarah Martinez: What about the agents? Did they notice the difference?
Robert Chen: Absolutely. Faster quotes, faster approvals, fewer errors requiring correction. Our agent retention improved because we became easier to work with.
The Recommendation
Sarah Martinez: Robert, I need to bring this to our executive team. What should I tell them?
Robert Chen: Tell them the status quo has hidden costs they're not seeing. Every manual process is an error waiting to happen. Every slow turnaround is a lost deal. Every hour of staff time on data entry is an hour not spent on growth.
Sarah Martinez: And Big0 specifically?
Robert Chen: They understood insurance finance. They didn't try to give us generic business software—they built for our specific workflows, our compliance requirements, our integration needs.
Sarah Martinez: What should we prepare for an initial conversation?
Robert Chen: Document your current workflows, your pain points, your integration requirements. They'll do a thorough assessment and show you exactly how a modern platform would transform your operations.
Sarah Martinez: Robert, thank you for being so open. I know we're technically competitors.
Robert Chen: Sarah, the market is big enough. And frankly, better technology raises the bar for everyone. Our agents deserve modern platforms. Our clients deserve fast, accurate service. If you can deliver that too, the whole industry benefits.
Sarah Martinez: I'll be making some calls tomorrow. Thank you.
Robert Chen: Good luck. And call me if you have questions during the process. I'm happy to share more about what we learned.