Spotlight on Gordon Bathurst two years on: Strengthening digital broking for the market

Two years on from our original spotlight with Gordon Bathurst, Director of Broking Solutions, we revisited how the broking landscape has evolved and what progress has been made across digital placement and operational efficiency.

Since our last conversation, Gordon has continued to push forward a clear ambition: reduce friction in the broking lifecycle and bring brokers closer to a seamless, data driven placement journey. In that time he has translated strategy into delivery, shaping an approach centred on integration, modular adoption and market first workflows. 

Looking back, Gordon describes his most significant achievement as turning paper based strategy into tangible progress.

"We have moved from strategy slides to development on our first web based module," he explains. "It is built on our Insurance Platform and focused on simplifying placement and reducing re keying."

At the heart of this is a new bridge between placing platforms, starting with Whitespace, and downstream PAS systems. This ensures bound risks flow as data rather than documents, setting the stage for more accurate and efficient post firm order processes.

Gordon has also expanded the API footprint, including the 8.4 Policy API release, enabling brokers to create and progress policies through automated integration. Combined with outbound EBOT via ETP to digitise technical accounts, these steps are already reducing operational effort and shortening the cycle from firm order to settlement.

The broking and placement landscape has continued to evolve rapidly over the past two years, and three shifts have been particularly influential.

• Digital placement is now the norm: Brokers expect native integration with Whitespace or PPL, their workbench, PAS and billing. Integration cannot be an add on. It has to be designed in from the start.
• Modular and API first adoption: Clients want to modernise incrementally, not replace entire systems at once. Gordon has prioritised modular capabilities that can be adopted class by class or market by market.
• AI moving into mainstream workflows: Appetite matching, submission triage and market suggestions are gaining traction, and the focus is on embedding them smoothly into the process, not treating them as standalone tools.

These shifts have reinforced a consistent theme. Practicality matters. Solutions need to meet brokers where they work today while opening a path to more sophisticated, data driven workflows.

Gordon is now focused on launching Verisk's new broker placement module, the first step in a broader evolution of the broking ecosystem.

"It is about making placement genuinely data driven end to end," he says. From early risk capture, through integration into Whitespace, to market selection, contract build and analytics, the aim is to deliver a connected experience that removes duplication and improves decision making.

Upstream, Gordon is investing in appetite matching and triage so submissions reach the right markets faster. Downstream, the focus is straight through post bind processing, including expanding EBOT, introducing ECOT and enabling broker to broker e accounting to reduce the manual choreography still common in settlement.

The biggest gains so far come from replacing document handoffs with structured data flow. The bridge between placing platforms and PAS, supported by the 8.4 Policy API, removes a major duplication hotspot around policy creation and updates.

Outbound EBOT and clearer Work Order workflows are reducing email and spreadsheet loops, but Gordon sees more to tackle.

• deeper two way integration with PPL
• richer Whitespace data capture beyond PDFs
• simplified cross ledger and billing processes
• introducing ECOT to complete the digital settlement chain

These areas represent the next stage of removing friction across the broking value chain.

Central to Gordon's progress is the strengthened alignment across Verisk's broking, underwriting, pricing and marketplace solution areas.

"With the other Solution Directors, we have anchored everything on two principles," he says. "Shared domains and services, so we reuse platform capabilities instead of rebuilding them, and marketplace integration by design."

Treating platforms like Whitespace and PPL as first class channels ensures brokers stay in their natural flow while downstream billing, cash and analytics remain connected and consistent.

Two years on from our last spotlight with Gordon, the direction is clear. A broking ecosystem built around interoperability, modular adoption and market driven design.