Insurance Times Awards 2026: Daines Kapp on its ‘good year’ in a ‘challenging market’

Why did you put yourselves forward for the category?

Commercial insurance is a very large part of what we do and it’s been a good year despite a challenging market. Over the past two years we’ve put artificial intelligence (AI) tools to good use across the business, in the documents clients receive, the way they report claims and how new clients find us.

We wanted to see how that compares with the best commercial brokers in the market. We’re family-run, we intend to stay independent and we’ve grown without acquisitions, which is increasingly unusual for a firm our size.

What makes your entry stand out and why should you win?

Much of our growth this year has come from existing clients taking out cover they hadn’t realised they were missing. Every renewal report now includes a simple traffic-light audit showing the risks a client isn’t insured for and we follow it up with short email campaigns explaining areas such as cyber and management liability in plain terms.

We’ve also used AI to improve the documents clients receive, so their policy conditions and exclusions are personalised and clearly explained. New enquiries have increased sixfold too, following AI-assisted work on our website and the pages for the trades we specialise in.

What would winning mean to you and your firm?

My dad started Daines Kapp in 1989. Several of the team have spent most of their careers here and others joined as apprentices and now look after their own clients. We really want to recognise the amazing work the team put in to care for our clients. It would be good for our clients to see as well, many of whom have been with us for decades. And it would show that a small independent broker can hold its own against much larger firms in commercial lines.