Case study · Insurance

FHK Insurance: when your platform is sunset, build one you own

GBS, the platform FHK Insurance ran its agency on, was acquired by AgentBLOC and then sunset, leaving FHK and other agencies scrambling for a replacement. FHK called me. Six months later GAM, a custom General Agency Management platform built around FHK’s own workflows, reporting, and agents, went live. That was September 2019. It still runs the entire operation.

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6 monthsBuilt and launched

Sep 2019Live in production

7 yearsRunning the operation

DozensAgents on the platform

At a glance

A forced migration, turned into a platform FHK owns

FHK didn’t choose to leave GBS. The choice they did get was where to go next: another vendor’s product, with the agency reshaped to fit it, or a platform built around the agency as it already worked.

Client	FHK Insurance
The trigger	GBS, FHK’s agency platform, was acquired by AgentBLOC and then sunset.
What I built	GAM (General Agency Management): one platform for agents, policies, commissions, billing, and reporting.
Built around	FHK’s existing workflows, the reports leadership already relied on, and what their agents needed day to day.
Stack	C# on .NET 9, ASP.NET Core, Razor Pages, SQL Server.
Timeline	Six months to build; live in September 2019.
Today	Seven years in production, supporting billing and operations for dozens of agents, run and extended by a team of three.

The situation

The platform the business lived in was going away

For an insurance agency, the management platform isn’t one tool among many. It’s where the business lives: agent records, policies, commissions, billing, and the reports leadership reads to run the place. For FHK, all of that lived in GBS.

When AgentBLOC acquired GBS and then sunset it, every agency on the platform had to find somewhere else to go, on a timeline it didn’t set. FHK was one of them.

The obvious move was another off-the-shelf product: retrain everyone, rebuild the reports, bend the workflows to fit someone else’s screens, and carry the same risk into the next acquisition. FHK chose to own the platform instead, and brought me in to build it.

What I built

One platform for the whole operation

GAM wasn’t a generic CRM with insurance fields bolted on. It was designed around how FHK already worked: the same workflows, the same reports, and what their agents needed every day.

01 · Agents

Agent management

The agents FHK works with and their books of business, in one system the agency controls.

02 · Policies

Policy management

Policies tracked from the agency’s side and tied to the agents who wrote them.

03 · Billing

Commissions & billing

Commission tracking and billing for dozens of agents, in the same database as everything else.

04 · Reporting

The reports they already ran

The reporting FHK relied on in GBS, rebuilt on a single SQL Server database the agency owns.

Timeline

From a sunset notice to seven years in production

1
The trigger

GBS is acquired, then sunset

AgentBLOC acquires GBS and winds it down. FHK and the other agencies on it need a replacement.
2
6 months

Design & build

GAM is designed around FHK’s workflows, reporting, and agent needs, and built in C# on SQL Server.
3
September 2019

Go-live

FHK moves off GBS and onto GAM: billing and operations for dozens of agents, in one platform.
4
2019 to today

Kept current, still growing

Upgraded along the way to .NET 9, and extended by a team of three.

In production since 2019 GAM / 2026

Seven years later, a team of three keeps GAM moving

The platform built to replace a sunset product is now where FHK’s newest capabilities ship.

Owning the platform means the roadmap belongs to FHK, not to a vendor. A small team of three runs GAM today and ships advanced features on FHK’s schedule, on the same codebase that went live in 2019, now running on .NET 9.

Talk about your platform

The engagement also shaped Insurancera, my self-hosted insurance management platform for MGAs and brokers. See insurance technology.

Now shipping3

01Automatic statement ingestStatements ingested and processed automatically, not keyed in by hand

02Payments to agents & downlinesPayouts driven by the same records as commissions and billing

03Client email platformEmail that connects to clients, straight from the records already in GAM

The result, judged

Replacement platform live within six monthsPass
Built around FHK’s existing workflows and reports, not a vendor’sPass
Still running the entire operation seven years laterPass
On a current runtime (.NET 9), maintained by a small teamPass

Why it worked

Three decisions that held up for seven years

Built around the business

A replacement goes live faster when nobody has to relearn their job. GAM matched the workflows and reports FHK already trusted, so the move off GBS changed the system, not the agency.

Scoped to ship

Six months, one platform, the whole operation. The first release covered what FHK needed to run the business; everything since has been built on top of a system already in production.

Built to be owned

Mainstream C# and SQL Server that a small team can run and extend, kept current to .NET 9. No vendor can acquire it, and no vendor can sunset it.

Your platform

Is a vendor deciding your platform’s future?

If the system your operation runs on is being acquired, sunset, or has simply stopped fitting the business, let’s talk about what owning it would take.

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