SDR

SDR's model depends on members sharing each other's medical costs, so money moves between thousands of people every month. For years, those funds were pooled and managed by SDR's finance team, as was standard across the industry.

In 2019, that changed. New regulations meant organizations like SDR could no longer hold pooled member money without risking treatment as an unlicensed money transmitter. Each member needed a separate account in their own name, and the deadline was six months away.

The platform underneath couldn't make that shift. A decade-old legacy CRM system was expensive to run and hard to customize, and the enrollment flow was so difficult that many applicants gave up before becoming members. SDR faced a compliance risk and a growth problem at the same time.

We started with discovery alongside SDR's leadership: mapping regulatory requirements, studying how partner banks open and manage accounts, auditing the old system, and researching where members struggled. After weighing the cost of patching the legacy platform against building new, SDR chose to rebuild.

Phase one was about the deadline. A new financial model places each member's funds in a segregated account with an accredited bank, and real-time banking integration moves money between members as sharing requests are approved. Bank connections, card payments, and employer ACH payments each run through dedicated integrations.

Then the member experience. Enrollment became a guided sequence of participants, plan level, personal and family details, add-ons, and a final review, with the monthly contribution updating live. Every screen was refined through A/B testing.

Over roughly three years, a team of about 19 grew the platform into five React-based progressive web apps on Microsoft Azure: enrollment, a member portal, an employer portal, an admin portal, and a website. Behind them sit 15 microservices, a shared design system, and PCI-DSS and HIPAA compliance.

Phase one shipped on time: 100% regulatory compliance and zero service disruption for members.

Over three years:

Year-over-year retention grew from 68% to 90% (+32%) Enrollment conversion rose 4.2x Member LTV grew 28%, with average membership up from 3.2 to 4.1 years Claims processing became 3.1x faster, from 7 days to 48 hours SaaS platform costs fell 45% Employer and B2B partnerships grew 35% Support calls dropped 65%, and member onboarding became 2.5x faster Add-ons now bring in $1.2M in annual revenue

Financial and health data share one platform, so security was part of every design decision from the start. All financial transactions are encrypted end to end, member accounts are protected with multi-factor authentication, and administrators work under role-based access controls. Full audit trails keep every action traceable for regulators, and the whole system meets PCI-DSS and HIPAA standards.