A leading US healthcare provider came out of the pandemic determined to reignite growth, and Medicare sales was a line of business it was keen to scale. But the market for Medicare sales runs almost entirely through brokers and agents, licensed professionals representing multiple insurers who earn commission on each sale. Which meant the only real path to growth was motivating more brokers to send business the provider’s way. The problem was- doing business with the provider was still a largely manual, paper-heavy process. Enrolling a customer meant extensive data entry on the broker’s end, followed by submission to the provider and then to CMS, the body overseeing Medicare, a process so time-consuming it was eating into broker productivity. It also came with a costly side effect: 15–20% of applications were being rejected due to manually entered errors, and every rejected application risked sending that customer to a competing broker and a different plan entirely. The provider needed to replace that manual workload with modern digital capabilities, giving brokers more time to sell, and giving the business more enrolments and profitability in return.
Ascendion partnered with the client to engineer the digital solutions it needed, using its proprietary Pathfinder methodology to uncover the client’s core business objectives and deliver a holistic view of its processes, costs, and technologies before writing a single line of code.
From that foundation, Ascendion built a broker portal that strips hours of manual work out of the application process, integrating directly with the client’s CMS and other systems so key data fields auto-populate, accelerating enrolments and renewals. A companion mobile app gave brokers the same tools on the go, even offline, so they could sell faster from anywhere. Real-time analytics brought business intelligence reporting into the picture, tracking applications across their full lifecycle and giving agents and brokers better visibility into their own activity.
Ascendion also connected the client’s customer portal to the broker portal, transforming lead capture, automatically routing website visitors looking for insurance straight to a broker who could quickly match them to the right plan. The first product was delivered in just three months, on an aggressive timeline set by the client from day one.
Tech Stack:
Drove 50,000 new member sign-ups every quarter, growing the client's Medicare line of business and revenue in a fiercely competitive, broker-led market.
Delivered solutions at 10x lower cost than equivalent projects built internally, freeing up capital for other business improvement initiatives.
Reached 60,000 brokers regularly using the mobile app, drawn in by its usability and offline functionality.
Brought the first product to market in just three months, despite an aggressive delivery timeline.
Gave the client's engineering team the agility to implement new features and make changes on a one-day notice, keeping the platform productive and cost-efficient over time.
