Managing general agents were once the market’s fallback for difficult risks. Today, they are increasingly the route through which insurers deploy capital, access expertise and enter markets they would not approach directly.
That reversal reflects a shift emerging in parts of the market in how underwriting authority, data and decision-making are distributed. For Glen Gibbons (pictured), underwriting director at Touchstone Underwriting, the shift points to a landscape no longer organised around scale alone, but around who can apply expertise quickly and profitably in areas others avoid.
MGAs have undergone a marked reputational reset. Gibbons said they were once viewed with deep scepticism. “It was where you had to go if you couldn’t place it anywhere else. It’s completely different now.”
That shift has been driven by the movement of experienced underwriters out of composite insurers and into MGA platforms, many seeking greater control over underwriting decisions and, in some cases, a direct stake in performance.
The result is a concentration of specialist expertise that insurers, structured around diversified portfolios, cannot easily replicate across niche segments. MGAs are now seen less as intermediaries and more as underwriting businesses in their own right.
Whether MGAs are increasing capacity or simply redistributing it is, in practice, a secondary question. In specialist lines, they are enabling capacity that would otherwise remain unused.
“It’s both,” Gibbons said. “The insurers are utilising MGAs to allow them to access and deal with a product that they might not normally handle.”
For insurers, the attraction lies in controlled participation. Capacity can be deployed into unfamiliar or volatile trades, such as cladded properties or complex construction risks, while being ring-fenced from the wider book.
This allows carriers to participate without committing their full balance sheet or operational resource. It also enables MGAs to assemble layered capacity, building a lead position and drawing in supporting capacity behind it.
In that sense, capacity is not simply being accessed differently. It is being created through specialist structures that align capital with expertise, often in areas the traditional market has stepped away from.
Operational advantage remains central to the MGA model. Product development cycles that can take months within insurers can, in some cases, be reduced to weeks.
“Our advantage is focus,” Gibbons said. “With clear underwriting authority and highly experienced teams, we can make decisions quickly and decisively.”
MGAs typically operate with delegated underwriting power that allows them to assess and price risks without multiple layers of internal referral.
For brokers placing risks with insurers, the difference is immediate. “Even if insurers want to say yes, they’ve got so many hoops to jump through,” Gibbons said. “There’s a chance it might not come off anyway and even if it does it might be too late.”
In complex or time-sensitive placements, responsiveness is decisive. It often determines whether business is written at all.
Less visibly, the flow of information is also changing. MGAs, often built without legacy systems, are generating more consistent and usable data than some of their capacity providers.
“The way we structure risks and capture information gives insurers a level of clarity they find genuinely useful,” Gibbons said. “They’re taking our data and aligning it against their own.”
That dynamic would have been unlikely a decade ago. In some segments, insurers are increasingly relying on MGA-generated data to understand performance.
Cost structures reinforce the shift. Leaner operating models allow MGAs to deploy capacity more efficiently, while ring-fencing gives insurers a degree of protection if a niche underperforms.
A growing concern is the spread of the same capacity across multiple MGA facilities. “The same capacity is being offered out on eight different facilities,” Gibbons said. “From our perspective, underwriting control is strongest when capacity is deployed selectively. Excessive fragmentation across multiple facilities can make performance oversight more challenging for insurers.”
As the model scales, questions around discipline, oversight and long-term profitability are becoming harder to ignore.
MGAs are increasingly shaping how new and emerging risks are underwritten. Areas such as construction, property and newer exposures like drone-related activity are often first written within the MGA ecosystem.
“They’re not just filling gaps; they’re creating niche opportunities,” Gibbons said. “It is fundamentally changing the way specialist risks are underwritten.”
That shift is forcing insurers to respond, with many building dedicated MGA strategies and reassessing how delegated underwriting fits alongside their core books. Technologies such as artificial intelligence are expected to reshape how risks are triaged and processed, potentially strengthening the role of carriers in areas where scale matters.
Even so, the centre of gravity is moving. Core business will remain within insurers’ direct control, but it is increasingly commoditised and difficult to differentiate. “Anyone can write it,” Gibbons said.
The real contest lies in specialist lines, where expertise, speed and judgement determine outcomes. Capacity may still sit with insurers, but in many cases it is MGAs deciding how and where it is put to work.
