The US managing general agent market kept up its rapid growth in 2025, with Conning estimating that total premium flowing through MGAs reached approximately $128 billion, according to a new study from the investment management and insurance research firm.
Statutory filings put MGA direct premium written at $102.6 billion for the year, a 12% increase from 2024. Conning's broader estimate, which folds in Lloyd's business and other premium not fully captured in statutory reporting, points to a market considerably larger than what shows up in regulatory filings alone.
The pace of expansion continues to outstrip the wider property-casualty sector. Reported MGA direct premium written through statutory Note 19 filings grew 12% in 2025, more than double the broader property-casualty market's approximately 5% growth rate. The trajectory has held for several years.
Conning had previously estimated the MGA market at $114.1 billion in 2024, up 16% from the prior year, and at just over $102 billion in 2023.
Conning's study, titled "Managing General Agents: Reconfiguring the Insurance Value Chain?," attributed the sector's growth to a structural shift rather than simply favorable underwriting conditions. Underwriting expertise, distribution, data infrastructure, licensed paper, reinsurance, and risk capital are becoming increasingly modular, the study found, positioning MGAs to play a more central coordinating role across the insurance ecosystem.
Several factors underpinned the 2025 growth, according to the study, including continued expansion of the specialty and excess and surplus (E&S) markets, wider adoption of artificial intelligence and data-driven underwriting, heavier investment in technology-enabled efficiency and product innovation, and sustained capacity support from fronting companies, insurers, reinsurers, and alternative capital providers.
"The MGA market's continued expansion reflects more than premium growth; it represents a meaningful evolution in how underwriting expertise, capital, technology, and distribution come together across the insurance value chain," said Alan Dobbins, a director of insurance research at Conning. "As insurers, reinsurers, and capital providers seek greater specialization and flexibility, MGAs are increasingly serving as strategic partners that accelerate innovation and bring new insurance solutions to market."
The study also tracks the growing footprint of fronting carriers, which generated an estimated $22.6 billion in gross premium in 2025. Fronting relationships now support approximately 20% of total US MGA premium, Conning found, up from roughly 17% in 2023, cementing their role as a link between MGAs and the insurers, reinsurers, and alternative capital providers that back their books.
Premium growth has come alongside a parallel wave of dealmaking. Mergers and acquisitions involving MGAs increased in both number and size through 2025 and into 2026, with private equity firms and carriers extending their reach. Recent examples illustrate the range of activity: Blackstone Credit & Insurance and AmTrust Financial Services closed a transaction forming ANV Group Holdings around seven of AmTrust's MGAs and fee-based businesses, Ryan Specialty completed acquisitions of Toronto-based Stewart Specialty Risk Underwriting and European commercial construction specialist 360° Underwriting, and SiriusPoint sold ArmadaCare, its supplemental health MGA, to Ambac Financial Group for $250 million.
"In 2025, the industry saw targeted consolidation among MGAs," said Claudia Carnevale, president of North America Programs for Munich Re Specialty. Acquirers are generally chasing scale and technology, using deals to enter new markets. For carriers and reinsurers evaluating MGA partners, the trend raises questions around counterparty stability and how quickly acquired platforms integrate data and claims systems.
MGA growth tracks closely with trends in the adjacent program business segment. Program premiums grew 40% between 2022 and 2024 to reach $110.8 billion, according to the Target Markets Program Administrators Association's 2025 State of Program Business Study, compared with roughly 21% growth in commercial P&C premiums generally over the same period. Ninety-six percent of program administrators surveyed said they plan to launch new programs in the next two years.
That study, along with subsequent industry gatherings, flagged a talent constraint that specialty carriers and reinsurers will need to watch. Executives at TMPAA's 2025 meetings warned that underwriting talent has not kept pace with new MGA formation, with retirements among experienced underwriters compounding the gap even as private equity and carrier capital continue flowing into new ventures.
The figures suggest an MGA sector growing faster than its underlying market not because of a single tailwind but because specialization has taken hold across underwriting, distribution, and capital deployment. Fronting carriers, once a niche mechanism, now underpin a fifth of all MGA premium, while consolidation is concentrating scale and technology among fewer, larger platforms.
For insurers and reinsurers allocating capacity, the practical question raised by this year's data is less whether MGAs will keep growing and more which platforms have the underwriting discipline and talent pipeline to sustain that growth through a market some participants describe as entering its first real soft-market test.
The Conning study, which also draws on a proprietary 2026 survey of MGA executives and insurers, points to further M&A activity and emerging operating models as forces likely to keep reshaping competition across the value chain.
