Branch Insurance improves hiring diversity and accelerates app development using AWS AppSync

Branch Insurance is an insurance technology startup that provides simple insurance policies and comprehensive bundles to customers in the United States. The company set out to radically simplify the end-user experience for insurance customers by offering bindable prices based on just a couple simple pieces of information – the customer’s name and address. One of Branch’s key differentiators compared to other insurance providers is how quickly customers get a rate they can purchase. Since the company was founded in 2016, in Columbus, Ohio, it rapidly grew to 33 US States.

However, offering this simplicity required powerful infrastructure to process data quickly and store it efficiently and securely in compliance with regulations. Branch used AWS AppSync – a serverless GraphQL and Pub/Sub API service that simplifies building modern web and mobile applications, as the foundation for its backend infrastructure. AWS AppSync helped the company speed up development, simplify environment creation and duplication and reduce boilerplate code.

Further, with growth, Branch wanted to avoid hiring senior developers as that excluded many junior talented developers from underrepresented groups in the software industry. “It can be difficult to find experienced developers who are willing to learn and adapt to the way your company wants to do things.” says Herndon. Branch decided to hire junior developers and up-skill them through an in-house bootcamp program that offered training specific to its technology stack. The curriculum focused on AWS services that its developers used every day and since AWS services offered built-in security and compliance guardrails, Branch was able to get new hires started quickly on building their differentiated business logic.

Read the full case study to learn how Branch used AWS AppSync and AWS Amplify Libraries in conjunction with a suite of other AWS solutions such as AWS DynamoDB, Amazon Cognito to accelerate its app development cycles by 6 months, improved team productivity and set an industry example on shifting from hiring expertise to nurturing expertise.

AWS offers a broad set of purpose-built tools and services to support development workflows for native iOS/Android, React Native, and JavaScript developers. Discover how easy it is to develop, deploy, and operate your app, even if you are new to AWS. And with the speed and reliability of AWS infrastructure, deliver secure apps that scale from prototype to millions of users, automatically. Explore our front-end web and mobile application development services to learn more.

Author:

Shagun Tewari

Shagun is a Sr. Product Marketing Manager on the Front-End Web & Mobile team which includes AWS Amplify, AWS AppSync and AWS Device Farm.