Claims platform for deposit-replacement insurance in five weeks
A spec in August became a claims platform in production five weeks later, built on a live platform OES had been releasing since March.
- Sector
- UK rental deposit-replacement insurance
- Role
- Release owner for the live platform and lead engineer on the claims platform.
- Timeline
- August to September 2026
- Stack
- SvelteKit, TypeScript, AWS, Stripe
Outcomes
- 5 weeks From the written spec to the claims platform in production.
- 250m Location accuracy needed before a video can be recorded. The adjuster sees whether it was filmed at the property.
- Since March Release owner for the live platform, with backups proven by a restore.
The problem
The client sells deposit-replacement insurance to UK renters. When a tenancy ends and a landlord makes a claim, that claim has to be filed, evidenced, reviewed and valued. The business needed a claims platform to handle that from filing to valuation, built on top of a live platform that couldn’t be put at risk.
What OES did
The spec arrived in the middle of August. Five weeks later the claims platform was in production, covering:
- a filing wizard where the letting agent builds an itemised claim
- tenant responses, accepting or disputing each item with their own evidence
- an adjuster review queue, where the adjuster can request information, approve, part-approve or decline
- mobile-only video evidence, recorded offline-first so a weak signal on a property visit doesn’t lose the footage, with the location checked against the property
- a transcript of every video, so the adjuster can read along while reviewing
The video recorder is the part most likely to fail in the field, so that is where the testing went.
Keeping the live platform healthy
Before the claims work, from March, OES maintained and extended the platform it sits on and ran its production releases.
The off-site backups were already in place, but OES found they had stopped running and the off-site store was empty. OES got them running again with two scheduled functions, and restored a real dump to prove they could be used.
OES also put sanctions and anti-money-laundering screening for tenants and agents into production in March.
The outcome
A new product in production five weeks after the spec, on a platform where the operational basics are checked rather than assumed: backups that restore, releases with one owner, and tests where the product is hardest to get right.
What this means for you
Adding a product to a live platform is two jobs: building the new thing, and making sure the platform under it is as healthy as everyone assumes. Check the second before you start the first.
Have a prototype that needs to become a product?
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