Founder Of The Week: Todd Davison

• Todd Davison co-founded Purbeck Insurance after seeing firsthand at Deloitte how personal guarantees created major risk barriers for business owners seeking growth finance, leading him to develop specialist personal guarantee insurance.
• Davison is Managing Director at Purbeck, managing policies, having insured more than 5,000 SME directors across £700 million of personal guarantees with little direct competition in the UK.
• Built a support-first model for founders: Beyond insurance, Davison designed Purbeck to include mentoring, financial guidance and insolvency support, helping business owners navigate financial distress and protect both their companies and personal assets.

Tell Me About Yourself and Purbeck Insurance

I’m a chartered accountant and did my training with Deloitte where I spent time in the financial services M&A advisory team. Outside of work I’m a keen sportsman both playing and watching lots of different sports. I also run when I can, near my Cambridgeshire home and love to cook for my wife and young family, as a good way to wind down after a long day.

Purbeck Insurance Services is a Managing General Agent in the UK. That means we act like a mini-insurance company for a larger insurer, with authority to underwrite our personal guarantee insurance product, issue policies, and manage claims. This has worked very well for us over the past 8.5 years. To date we have insured over 5000 small business owners and directors on £700million of personal guarantees. We still have no direct competition in the UK and our products/services are unique in that respect.

A highlight of 2025 was winning MGA of the year (sub 100 employees category) at the Insurance Times Awards.

What Inspired You To Start Purbeck Insurance, and What Problem Were You Trying To Solve?

It was back when I was working with SMEs at Deloitte I could see what a big barrier personal guarantees for business loans were to directors.These companies wanted to grow and needed finance but that meant a lot of risk on the shoulders of one or two individuals. I knew there must be a way to reduce that risk so that loan decisions could be made with more confidence. Insurance seemed the obvious solution so we developed personal guarantee insurance to help reduce the friction when signing a personal guarantee in support of business finance.

We also wanted to make sure that if a client did get into financial difficulty, we had support services in place to help them save their business or come out of an insolvency process in the best way possible. We therefore built a range of services that are triggered at the point a client contacts us to confirm they are in financial distress, from mentoring support to insolvency practioners. This is all part of cover provided by the policy.

Working in corporate finance helped in terms of the understanding of the finance process and together with the co-founders we devised this product to support businesses in their growth objectives.

What Has Been Your Biggest Challenge So Far, and How Did You Overcome It?

We’ve had a few challenges and headwinds to overcome. Given the nature of our product which is linked to the success of SMEs that we support we’ve had to navigate the pandemic, cost-of-living crisis, changes in regulation, Brexit etc. We are also sector agnostic so we need to be alive and aware of issues our client face in each of their own industries.

Another challenge for us is that as an insurance intermediary (undertaking distribution, underwriting, policy servicing and claims handling process) we are trying to create a market at the same time. So we are investing heavily to spread the awareness of our products/services but also to educate individuals on personal guarantees – what they are, what they mean and the risks of signing these contracts.

Can You Describe a Pivotal Moment That Significantly Shaped the Direction of Purbeck Insurance?

The launch itself was a great accolade by taking a hypothetical and regulated product straight into market – we had no real comparables to benchmark how the product should look, how it should work, what the customer journey should be, how to assess/rate risk and operationally how to support our clients.

How Do You Define Success?

As a business: Building a business with a strong culture and where our team have high satisfaction; I feel supporting the business in that way is so important and giving people the platform to grow and pursue their own ambitions.

As a founder: To enjoy what I do and to continue to push boundaries and not to rest on our laurels. I enjoy my work but with a young family as well I think striking the right balance to keep focused with work but not to lose sight of the present and enjoy time with family and friends.

What Advice Would You Give To Someone Thinking About Launching Their Own Startup?

Be brave and bold. Have conviction in what you want to do but also don’t be afraid to adapt and evolve the original idea – if I look back at the original business plan we put together in 2016, the product today and how we do things look quite different to what we expected and I think having that agility is important.

If you don’t try, you’ll never know and if it doesn’t work the first time then use that experience for the next idea.

What’s next for your company? Any exciting developments we should watch out for?

International expansion, increasing our PGI product offering to support other underserved PG markets and launching our own offshore reinsurance captive.

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Founder’s 5 with Todd Davison

Here is the exclusive TechRound’s Founder’s Five with Todd Davison.

Favourite business tool

There are some great tools out there – I think the online accounting platforms are great – we use Xero and also some of the expense tools (e.g. Soldo) are great as well.

One lesson you learned the hard way?

Don’t click on phishing emails!

One future trend you’re watching?

Continued automation in the insurance industry – obviously, AI is a hot topic across all verticals.

One quote you live by

“In all walks of life”– look after people who look after you.

One book/podcast you recommend

Shoedog by Phil Knight – I think it shows the power of having a diverse group of people at the decision-making stage and the impact of taking calculated risks

Want to be featured as TechRound’s Founder of the Week? Know someone who deserves to be recognised as a founder making waves in the startup landscape? Find out more about this weekly feature and how to get involved here.