Building insurance calculators that don't capture leads: what we learned
Most insurance sites put a calculator behind a lead form. We did the opposite, and it turned out to be an interesting engineering and product problem. Here is what we built and what we learned. A typical premium estimator asks for a name, email, ZIP, and phone before showing a number. That means: We wanted three tools that give an answer immediately, with zero capture. All three are static, client-side, and load in under a second. No backend, no database of users, nothing stored. Every number traces back to a primary source (NAIC, III, state DOI filings), and those sources are published alongside the tools in a statistics library so a reader can check our work. If a figure cannot be sourced, we cut it. If your calculator's value depends on hiding the answer until the form is submitted, the answer is probably not very defensible. Publishing the method and the sources costs nothing and…