Daniel Lloyd-John: ‘Pioneer for change’ broker designs talent-centric, geography agnostic expansion plan

In hindsight, emerging from a stint in the garden to launch a new broking business a mere 13 days before Boris Johnson’s UK government began Covid-19 pandemic linked lockdown announcements in March 2020 was not ideal.

However, this was the situation entrepreneur Daniel Lloyd-John found himself facing when he established Broadway Insurance Partners six years ago – an independent, Manchester-based high net worth (HNW) broker funded by a collective of four founders to deliver a “personalised, high touch, white glove” client service, while also being a “destination” for talent and nurturing insurer relationships.

Despite the timing of the business’ launch – and in some instances, even aided by it – Broadway Insurance Partners “has grown, adapted and shaped itself around the client need and that of market appetite” to now offer a much broader spectrum of services. Lloyd-John describes the broker as now being “B2E” focused, or targeted at entrepreneurs that need coverage for both their companies and families.

Today, the broker has around 50 staff in Manchester that source insurance programmes for entrepreneurs that can include HNW, commercial cover – from SME and mid-market firms to larger corporates – as well as health and wellbeing benefits. Broking employees push insurers to review client details in the round, regardless of individual policy renewal dates.

The monetary figures certainly confirm that Broadway Insurance Partners’ pivot beyond just the HNW world from around 2023 has proved beneficial, with the firm’s 2025 full-year financial results – published in December 2025 – revealing £20m gross written premium (GWP) for last year, versus £12m for the same reporting period in 2024.

This correlates to 66% year-on-year GWP growth across the business, with Lloyd-John adding that the broker’s commercial portfolio – which makes up around 75% of its overall book – has recorded 74% GWP growth year-on-year too.

For Lloyd-John, the stage is now firmly set for the next phase of Broadway Insurance Partners’ growth trajectory, with the business having the “right balance and the right potency to our proposition” to start expanding beyond Manchester’s borders.

Partnership potential

However, Lloyd-John is not an advocate for M&A activity at this point in Broadway Insurance Partners’ journey – instead, he is “obsessed” by the joint venture partner model, which he believes can take advantage of the talent fallout arising as a result of broker megamergers.

Interestingly, Lloyd-John is not homing in on geography for Broadway Insurance Partners’ expansion – although if pushed on a preference, Yorkshire or Stoke would be his top picks, followed by London and Lloyd’s further down the line. For him, extending Broadway Insurance Partners’ footprint is all about finding the right people.

Lloyd-John hopes to identify talent that has been left unsatisfied with their job roles following consolidation and who are now considering their career options – which may include a temptation to start their own broker.

The chief executive wants to tap into this talent pool, primarily paying these individuals as employees to set up a Broadway Insurance Partners shop, so to speak, in their chosen locale – providing “all the tools and support to build your own version of Broadway”, yet also giving headroom for these go-getters “to feel like an entrepreneur” and earn income from their own business management.

He tells Insurance Times: “I really want to see our business identify in the next year two to three partners in different geographies.

“What do those people look like currently? They’re in client facing roles, producing type roles, but they’ve got a strong connection to a geography and they’ve successfully leveraged that on behalf of a much larger employer [previously] – but feel that in combination with Broadway, they could build a business from the beginning, put a flag in the ground and become the managing partner for that business and sharing the income for it.”

Lloyd-John’s passion for the partnership approach stems from his own career trajectory, which included stints at global giants Aon and Marsh between 2014 and 2019, both in London and across the UK’s regions.

He explains: “I wish someone had offered me [a joint venture partnership] because if I think back to 2019, that year in the garden, it was like all [my] eggs [were] in one basket, whereas I would love for someone to have recognised the entrepreneurial bits in me.

“I would like to stick to the principle that if the right person that’s deserving of the right chance and is really hungry and says ‘I really want to do this. I really do see this as a long-term, once in a lifetime opportunity’. Then, to me, it would be talent first, geography second. It has to be that way at its core.

“That’s what the insurers want from us as well. They want Broadway to create more Broadways and help them to write business. That’s really what we’re all in it together for. And it’s not to the detriment of the customer – it’s for the customer.”

Broadway Insurance Brokers has already seen some success with the joint venture partner model, with managing partner Nicola Blunt setting up in Stockport in 2025 and Louisa Roberts, also a managing partner, steering operations in Liverpool since 2024.

Lloyd-John additionally feels that joint venture partners can help introduce further specialties into Broadway Insurance Partners’ offering, if the talent taken on board has expertise in particular niches.

“I’m really excited about identifying people and moving that forward [in 2026],” Lloyd-John says.

“Geography [is] less relevant. It’s more about where’s the talent? Can we build a proposition around them and can we put rewards and benefits in place for that individual and their families? That makes this journey really exciting.”

Nurturing a different type of growth

Other priorities for Lloyd-John in 2026 include some internal housekeeping.

This includes “investing in the relationship between finance, operations, risk and compliance” following the appointment of the broker’s first group finance director in December 2025, Chris McEnaney.

“I’m really looking forward to the financial reporting, data and analysis that comes from that,” Lloyd-John adds.

Furthermore, Broadway Insurance Partners is taking its own risk advice to review its data, cyber and information technology (IT) security.

All in all, 2026 is set to be a busy year for the broker amid partner led expansion and back office fine tuning. However, Lloyd-John is keen to emphasise that the firm is “only just getting started”.

He continues: “We’re building something incredibly special and our job is to try and protect that. I’m willing for Broadway to invest time, capital and effort on being a pioneer for change – that sounds so bold, but creating opportunities [that professionals may or may not want to take up].

“I would love Broadway to be one of the leading independent brokers in the UK in 10 years’ time, [with a] broadened geographic footprint. I want us to be helping more customers in the way we do currently, not changing what we do. I’d like our culture and brand to stand for the things that we set out to challenge when we started – [the client, colleague and industry market experience].

“We stand a really good chance of growing [the] business to £100m GWP plus if we do it in the right way as opposed to just growing a business by acquiring people and stuff.

“There is an opportunity to do something more special in there.”