01
Core platform foundations
Supported the product and engineering foundation behind consumer enrollment, plan comparison, subsidy handling, billing, CMS/EDE integration surfaces, infrastructure, and operational systems.
Case study · Healthtech · CMS/EDE platform expansion
Building Catch through Phase 3 audit, agent/broker support, and agency support
Engagement: Embedded technical leadership · multi-year, ongoing
Catch is a health insurance brokerage built for the self-employed — freelancers, gig workers, and small-business owners shopping for coverage outside an employer plan. As an Enhanced Direct Enrollment (EDE) Entity, Catch applies APTC subsidies, runs plan comparisons, and writes enrollment data back to the federal Marketplace, operating under 45 CFR §155.220 and §155.260. Stackpad’s work with Catch has not been a one-time audit sprint. It has been an ongoing engineering partnership: hardening the platform through CMS/EDE Phase 3 audit requirements, adding agent/broker support, and now extending the system for agency workflows.
Result
Got Catch through CMS/EDE Phase 3 audit requirements
Result
Added agent/broker support to the existing consumer platform
Result
Now adding agency support and organization-level workflows
The constraints
What made this hard
Catch was not an audit project. It was a live health insurance platform where enrollment, plan comparison, APTC subsidies, billing, CMS/EDE compliance, and customer experience all met in the same product surface.
CMS/EDE Phase 3 audit requirements raised the bar on enrollment, plan-recommendation, subsidy, access-control, logging, and evidence workflows while the platform still had to serve real customers.
Agent/broker support added a new operating model on top of the existing consumer platform: new roles, permissions, certification posture, and broker-facing workflows.
Agency support adds organization-level structure: agency teams, hierarchy, workflow ownership, visibility, and the multi-tenant posture that comes with serving organizations instead of only individuals.
Every expansion had to preserve the core consumer enrollment, subsidy, and billing workflows already running in production.
What we shipped
Four workstreams, run in parallel
02
CMS/EDE Phase 3 audit support
Helped the platform hold a defensible posture through Phase 3 audit requirements while keeping enrollment, subsidy, and billing workflows live for customers.
03
Agent and broker support
Added agent/broker support on top of the existing consumer health insurance platform, extending the operating model without treating the original product as disposable.
04
Agency support now underway
Now extending the platform for agency workflows: organization-level support, team structure, role boundaries, and the operational visibility agencies need.
Outcomes
What changed
- Phase 3 audit
- A defensible platform posture through CMS/EDE Phase 3 audit requirements.
- Core workflows
- Enrollment, subsidy, and billing workflows kept running while regulatory and product requirements evolved.
- Agent / broker expansion
- A new role-based operating model added on top of the existing consumer platform.
- Agency expansion
- Organization-level agency support underway, with team structure and workflow ownership becoming first-class product concerns.
- Ongoing partnership
- The relationship continued beyond the audit because the platform kept evolving.
Currently underway
From broker workflows to agency support
Stackpad remains embedded with Catch. After adding agent/broker support to the existing consumer platform, the current work is extending the system for agencies — moving from individual broker workflows into organization-level support.
That means agency teams, role hierarchy, workflow ownership, operational visibility, and the multi-tenant posture that comes with serving organizations instead of only individual users. The case study’s other point: when the platform keeps evolving, the engineering relationship keeps going too.
How to think about us
Builders who can operate under scrutiny.
We build and remediate production systems so they keep working when customers, partners, auditors, and acquiring engineering teams are all looking closely. At Catch, that work had to hold up without disrupting live enrollments.
Building a platform that has to keep evolving?
If you’re building a product that has to move from first customer workflows into partners, teams, audits, or multi-sided operations, tell us what you’re trying to ship next.