In 2016, we at what is now Bindable, had a problem. It was a good problem to have, we had just signed a partnership with Liberty Mutual to help them provide choice auto and home quotes with some of their alumni groups. The actual problem was that our agents couldn't get the discounted Liberty Mutual quotes with our existing software. The idea was floated that we would have our own agents key in all of the users data into the Liberty system, get that quote, and then go back to our system to get the rest of the quotes. To me this sounded like a usability nightmare both for the customers and our agents.

I had a set of mockups for an idea I had about creating our own agent facing quoting software kicking around for about a year. When I saw this opportunity to finally build it, I jumped at the chance. Deep down I knew that if we brought the idea up to the higher-ups we'd never get the nod to spend time building software we already paid another company to provide. I went to our only programmer and ran the idea by him. He loved it and we were off.

We only had 6 weeks before the program launched and building out the full vision of the new platform was out of the question. I had an epiphany while working on the quoting experience for the alumni groups that we could repurpose the software we had already built from the customer facing quoting form to make the agent facing form. It was hack-y, but it worked. We had pulled it off, building a new agent experience that added functionality and carrier integrations that didn't make our agents take additional steps or re-key any data. We showed the creation I had dubbed the Policy Crusher 3000 to some Liberty execs shortly before the alumni program went live, and one of them said, "You should license this."

Those 4 simple words would change the name and direction of the business as we knew it. We started standing up the standalone version of Policy Crusher shortly after that meeting. Since it was initially built as internal software, Policy Crusher had a unique personality that we've kept in the production versions we license out today. The interface is available in both light and dark flavors, with dark mode being the default and preferred version. The interface is peppered with puns and easter eggs that add a sense of fun and casualness to what is normally a very strait laced and serious industry. Insurance is a serious business, but that doesn't mean we can't have some fun.