Gary Huddleston

Gary Huddleston’s work through DIBNI sits at the intersection of commercial insurance, digital business processes and the organisation of information for professional review. The emphasis is not on replacing insurance advice or automating the professional responsibilities of a broker. It is on improving the starting point: helping a business owner explain what the business does, what risks and assets are relevant, what outcome is being sought and what information an insurance professional may need in order to consider the enquiry properly.

Commercial insurance can require substantial information about activities, people, premises, assets, contracts, claims history, territories and operational exposures. The quality and structure of that information can materially affect how efficiently an enquiry can be understood. Gary’s role in developing DIBNI has therefore concentrated on the proposal journey itself — how information is requested, organised, documented and moved into an appropriate professional introduction.

This approach reflects a practical distinction between technology and regulated professional activity. DIBNI can support data collection, proposal preparation, documentation and routing. Advice, market selection, negotiation, placement and other regulated functions remain with the relevant authorised or regulated insurance professional where those functions apply.

DIBNI has been developed around a simple operating principle:

BUSINESS OWNER → STRUCTURED DIGITAL PROPOSAL → INTELLIGENT INTRODUCTION → APPROPRIATE INSURANCE PROFESSIONAL

The model begins with the business rather than expecting a customer to know every insurance class, underwriting term or market convention before making contact. A structured digital proposal can then organise the information into a form that is more useful for professional consideration.

For Gary, the purpose of DIBNI is to improve the quality of the introduction rather than to turn commercial insurance into an instant-price transaction. DIBNI is not an insurer, does not carry insurance risk and is not intended to operate as a comparison website or automated broker replacement. It is also not designed as a generic lead-generation mechanism. The proposition is based on better preparation, relevant information and a controlled introduction to an insurance professional who can explain their own role, regulatory status and service.

Digital Brokers Group Ltd operates the DIBNI platform. The DIBNI brand is used across the group’s digital commercial insurance introduction activity and territorial websites, with legal and regulatory descriptions applied according to the relevant jurisdiction and professional relationship.

DIBNI is being developed with an international structure spanning the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. Gary’s focus is on maintaining a common digital architecture while recognising that insurance regulation, market structure, terminology and professional relationships differ between territories.

The territorial DIBNI websites are therefore not presented as evidence that the same regulatory permissions, insurance products or partner arrangements apply everywhere. Each market requires its own implementation, legal wording and professional relationships. The group platform provides the common digital proposition: structured information, proposal preparation and appropriate introduction.

This international development also informs the technology architecture. The same underlying principles can support different territorial journeys while preserving local requirements and avoiding the assumption that a customer experience designed for one insurance market can simply be copied into another without review.

The result is intended to be a coherent DIBNI identity across markets, with each territory retaining the legal, regulatory and commercial distinctions required for that jurisdiction.

Gary Huddleston’s current focus is the continued development of the DIBNI customer and insurance-professional journey. That includes the way a business first enters the platform, how occupation and industry information is used to shape the proposal experience, how detailed commercial information is collected, and how the completed proposal can move into a secure client environment before an introduction is made.

The direction is deliberately measured. DIBNI is being built as infrastructure for better commercial insurance introductions rather than as a promise of instant insurance outcomes. The quality of the proposal, the suitability of the professional receiving it, the security of customer information and the clarity of each party’s role are treated as core parts of the product.

For business owners, the intended benefit is a clearer way to prepare for a commercial insurance conversation. For insurance professionals, the intended benefit is a better-structured starting point with information that has been collected specifically for professional review. For DIBNI, the objective is to make that connection more useful without crossing the boundary into functions that belong to the insurance professional.

Read Gary’s article, Why Commercial Insurance Proposals Need to Become Digital, on how structured digital proposals can improve the commercial insurance journey while preserving professional judgement, advice and broker relationships.