Why Commercial Insurance Proposals Need to Become Digital

By Gary Huddleston
Founder of DIBNI and Founder & Commercial Director of Digital Brokers Group Ltd

Commercial insurance has always depended on information. A broker cannot properly understand a business without knowing what it does, where it operates, what it owns, who it employs, the contracts it enters into and the exposures that sit behind those activities. Yet the way that information is collected and moved through the market is still often more fragmented than it needs to be.

For many businesses, the proposal journey can involve a mixture of emails, spreadsheets, PDFs, document attachments, telephone conversations and repeated requests for information that has already been supplied somewhere else. For insurance professionals, the same journey can mean re-keying information, interpreting inconsistent formats and trying to identify what is missing before a meaningful market conversation can begin.

That does not mean the traditional commercial insurance model is fundamentally broken. It means one part of it is ready for improvement: the way information is prepared before professional judgement is applied.

Commercial insurance still relies on fragmented information

Commercial insurance is not a uniform transaction. A manufacturer, a construction contractor, a professional practice and a hospitality business can have very different exposures even when they are similar in size. The information required can also change according to the class of insurance, the nature of the risk, the insurer’s appetite and the questions that arise during review.

That complexity is one reason commercial insurance has historically relied heavily on experienced people and flexible processes. Flexibility is valuable. Fragmentation is not.

When information is gathered without a consistent structure, several practical problems can follow. The business may be asked for the same information more than once. The broker may receive documents in different formats and have to reconstruct the risk picture manually. Important details may sit in an email thread rather than in the proposal itself. Information supplied for one purpose may be difficult to reuse later because it was never captured in a structured form.

None of these issues occurs in every case, and experienced brokers frequently compensate for them very effectively. But good people should not have to spend unnecessary time solving avoidable administrative problems.

Digitalisation should improve the process, not remove the professional

The mistake is to treat digitalisation as a synonym for automation.

Commercial insurance often requires judgement, clarification, market knowledge, underwriting discussion and professional advice. It also relies on relationships. A broker who understands a client’s business can identify issues that a form cannot anticipate. An underwriter may need context that is not obvious from a data field. A business owner may need an explanation of why a particular question matters before they can answer it properly.

Technology should not be used to pretend those functions no longer matter.

The more useful objective is narrower and, in my view, more valuable: improve the information journey so that the human conversation starts from a better position.

If a digital process can collect routine information consistently, reduce needless repetition, identify obvious gaps and organise the resulting material clearly, the insurance professional can spend more of the conversation on interpretation, advice and the points that genuinely require expertise.

That is not the removal of professional involvement. It is better preparation for it.

Structure matters before the proposal reaches the broker

A structured digital proposal is more than an online version of a paper form. Done properly, it should adapt to the information already provided and ask questions that are relevant to the business rather than forcing every customer through the same sequence.

The distinction matters. Businesses should not be expected to translate themselves into insurance terminology before they have even reached an insurance professional. They should be able to describe their activities in ordinary commercial language while the underlying process gives that information enough structure to support professional review.

There are several potential advantages to doing this before the proposal reaches the broker. Information can be presented more consistently. Missing fields or incomplete sections can be easier to identify. The broker can prepare for the first substantive discussion with a clearer picture of the business. Information that has already been supplied can be retained for later stages rather than requested again simply because the process has moved from one system or person to another.

Structured information can also improve auditability. It becomes easier to see what the business supplied, when it supplied it and how the proposal developed. That does not eliminate the need for checking or clarification, but it provides a cleaner starting record.

What the business owner should experience

From the client’s perspective, commercial insurance processes can become unnecessarily difficult when the system is designed around the internal structure of the insurance market rather than around the person providing the information.

A better digital journey should reduce avoidable typing, use clear questions, reveal complexity progressively and show the customer where they are in the process. Where information has already been captured and remains relevant, the system should be capable of reusing it rather than asking for it again.

This is particularly important in commercial insurance because the information burden can be substantial. A business may need to provide details of turnover, payroll, premises, equipment, vehicles, contracts, overseas activity, claims and other exposures. Presenting every possible question at once is rarely the best way to obtain reliable answers.

Progressive digital journeys can make that burden easier to manage without pretending that a complex commercial risk can always be reduced to a few clicks. The aim is not instant quotation or guaranteed placement. It is a clearer route through the information that genuinely needs to be collected.

What the insurance professional should receive

The broker should not receive a pile of data simply because a digital system is capable of collecting it.

The output has to be useful.

A good structured proposal should allow the insurance professional to understand the business quickly, see the main exposures, identify what is complete and what still needs clarification, and determine what should be discussed with the client before the enquiry progresses further.

That means data quality matters more than data volume. The objective should be to collect information with a purpose, not to create longer forms.

There is also a practical distinction between information gathering and professional interpretation. A digital platform may be able to establish that a business operates from multiple premises, employs a certain number of people or undertakes work in particular territories. What those facts mean for insurance placement, policy structure or insurer appetite may still require professional judgement.

The technology should therefore make the information easier to work with while leaving the professional responsibility where it belongs.

Technology and professional judgement belong together

I do not see the future of commercial insurance as a choice between technology and relationships.

The stronger model is likely to combine structured technology, professional judgement and strong relationships.

Each element addresses a different part of the problem. Technology can create consistency, retain information and reduce unnecessary administration. Professional judgement can interpret the risk, challenge assumptions and deal with complexity. Relationships create trust, context and accountability between businesses, brokers, underwriters and other participants.

Removing any one of those elements weakens the process.

The digital opportunity is therefore not to turn every commercial insurance transaction into a consumer-style purchase. It is to decide which parts of the journey benefit from structure and which parts are more valuable when handled by experienced people.

Where DIBNI fits

This is the problem we are working on through DIBNI.

DIBNI is a digital commercial insurance introduction and proposal platform. Its operating model can be expressed simply:

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

The purpose is not to make DIBNI the insurer, the broker or an automated substitute for professional advice. It is not designed as an instant quote service or a comparison site. The focus is the part before and around the introduction: helping the business prepare relevant information in a structured way and moving that information into an appropriate professional environment.

That distinction is deliberate. Commercial insurance already has expertise in the market. The opportunity is to help that expertise receive better-prepared enquiries.

The DIBNI proposal process is therefore being developed around occupation and industry context, progressive questions, structured proposal information and controlled handover. The system should reduce friction without creating false certainty about what happens next. A completed digital proposal is a better starting point for a professional conversation; it is not a replacement for that conversation.

The direction of travel

Commercial insurance will continue to require people who understand businesses, markets and risk. That is not a limitation of the industry. It is one of its strengths.

But preserving professional judgement does not require preserving every inefficient administrative process around it.

The proposal journey can become more structured, more reusable and easier for both sides to navigate. Businesses can be asked clearer questions. Brokers can receive information in a more consistent form. Repetition can be reduced. Gaps can be identified earlier. The handover from digital process to professional review can become more deliberate.

In my view, that is where digital commercial insurance has the greatest immediate value: not in trying to automate the professional out of the transaction, but in improving the quality of the information and preparation that reaches them.

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About the author

Gary Huddleston is the founder of DIBNI and Founder & Commercial Director of Digital Brokers Group Ltd. He has more than 25 years’ experience across insurance broking, commercial underwriting, business development and executive leadership in the UK, Ireland and Australia. His current focus is the development of structured digital commercial insurance proposal and introduction journeys.