Operational History

Pinnacle was founded in 1987 by Sandy Brewer, the first female police officer in a major metropolitan city in Washington. Having spent a career at crime scenes and dealing with a variety of workplace issues after the fact, Mrs. Brewer founded Pinnacle as a way to prevent unwanted outcomes from occurring in the first place by empowering decision makers with better information and resources so that they could make better choices

Being owned and operated by retired law enforcement and experts in the criminal justice system, we can tell you first hand that there is a big difference between a background check and a quality background check. While the majority of the companies in the industry focused on providing database driven background checks which were low in overhead, but built on outdated and incomplete information, Pinnacle focused on providing a background check system that was at the forefront of the industry in quality, scope, and turnaround speed. The result: Pinnacle rarely even generated a profit for over 15 years because the overhead was so high to do our process. However, while consultants, industry experts, and bankers called us crazy, over time we developed internal processes and technology which made this higher quality process more efficient. Because of this many of the biggest background screening companies in the industry began to subcontract their work to Pinnacle because we could provide the higher quality background checks for much cheaper than they could do it themselves and then they resold our services with their name on it.

Providing higher quality screening solutions and investigative services faster for often 50% less, Pinnacle became a leading provider for the nuclear power industry, government agencies, and other mission critical organizations. Up untill recently Pinnacle rarely even engaged in marketing activities and had no marketing staff, but still boasted exponential growth rates purely off client referrals. Offering a 99% client retention rate over the last decade, Pinnacle decided to take this higher quality background check system to the corporate world. The results were tremendous. A national retail chain agreed to do a case study. The chain had been doing background checks for years, but they hadn’t been doing quality background checks. Within one year of switching to the Pinnacle Background Check System merchandise losses were cut by 47%, an astounding improvement which earned Pinnacle a National Vendor of the Year award.

Learn how Pinnacle can offer the same improvements to your organization. Find out more here.