Transformed Excel-based financial calculators into a scalable web platform

CostsFirst is a FinTech platform under First American Title — one of the largest title insurance companies in the United States. The platform enables homebuyers, sellers, and refinancers to calculate closing costs accurately and quickly across multiple loan types including FHA, VA, conventional, and cash transactions.

With operations expanding across US states and a growing user base, the business needed to move beyond Excel-based calculators to a governed, scalable web platform — and ensure that platform stayed available and resilient at all times.

• Financial calculations ran on Excel-based tools with no centralised system or scalability
• Complex business logic was difficult to maintain, update, or audit across multiple loan types
• No disaster recovery mechanism existed to protect critical financial data from downtime
• Multi-company and multi-state operations could not be supported by the existing Excel setup
• End users had limited accessibility with no mobile-enabled or web-based calculation experience

1. Converted business logic before touching the interface

We mapped every Excel formula and financial rule through detailed stakeholder sessions before writing a line of code — ensuring all calculation logic was accurately captured and modularised before being rebuilt.

2. Designed for multi-state scale from the start

The architecture was built to support multiple companies, dedicated sales managers, and state-specific calculation rules — not retrofitted for it later. This made expansion across new states a configuration task, not a development task.

3. Built resilience into the infrastructure

We implemented AWS EC2 instances across multiple regions for disaster recovery — isolating the platform from failure scenarios and ensuring continuous uptime for a product handling critical financial data.

4. Validated outputs iteratively with the client

Given the precision required in financial calculations, every modular component was validated against real business scenarios with stakeholders before moving forward — reducing the risk of logic errors reaching production.

Financial Calculator Platform

• Web-based calculation engine replacing Excel across all loan types
• Support for FHA, VA, conventional loans, and cash transaction closing costs
• Multi-company setup with dedicated sales managers and user roles per company
• State and county-specific calculation rules across 28 states and 650+ counties
• Mobile-enabled interface for homebuyers, sellers, and refinancers

Infrastructure & Resilience

• AWS EC2 multi-region deployment for disaster recovery and business continuity
• Multiple backup instances isolating the platform from data centre failure scenarios
• Scalable server architecture managed by Classic Informatics on an ongoing basis
• 100% uptime maintained across critical financial data operations

CostsFirst moved from a fragmented Excel-based process to a governed, cloud-hosted financial calculation platform — supporting multi-state operations, multiple loan types, and a growing user base without manual overhead. Classic Informatics has maintained and evolved the platform across a 14–15 year partnership.

Business Impact

• Operations expanded across 28 US states and 650+ counties
• Multi-company setup with dedicated sales manager and user management
• Excel dependency eliminated — all calculations run through a single governed platform
• 100% uptime maintained through AWS multi-region disaster recovery setup
• 14–15 year active technology partnership with continuous platform evolution