00:13
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Insurance Business TV, here again at Insurefest 2026 with another of our peer-to-peer interviews. And today, we are catching up with Trey Ship. He is the VP of Commercial Sales and Marketing at Sage. Trey, welcome.

Thank you for having me.

00:28
Great to have you with us. We’re going to talk a little bit about the MGA space, the program specialty business in general. What would you say is driving the growth of MGA and program business right now? And more to the point, is it sustainable?

00:40
Yeah, I think a lot of it is specialization, as some of the larger traditional carriers are seeking to focus on less complex risks within the markets. Specialization in those opportunities, those voids that are left as some of those larger carriers are exiting, is opening up the doors for growth for a lot of the MGAs within the marketplace.

And I do expect it to continue as those large national carriers continue to focus on what are the easier places to hit their margins and to manage their portfolios.

01:11
And, of course, that specialization is key. So, how do you make the decision over which niches are perhaps worth building that capacity for, and which ones are perhaps too small or too volatile?

01:22
Yeah, we look for the intersection where there’s demand to warrant us looking at it, and then can we profitably and sustainably deliver a solution for that particular niche.

We don’t necessarily view all niches as something that we need to go after. But when we invest in one, we want to make sure that there is a producer demand for that. We’re solving a solution. It’s going to add value for our carrier partners, for our producers, for our reinsurers, and for Sage as a whole.

01:51
We always hear as well, don’t we, that relationships are the key to everything. But what is the trickiest part, perhaps, of the relationship between the MGA and the capacity provider right now?

02:01
The trickiest part between the MGA and the capacity provider is ensuring that there is complete alignment on the strategy for growth.

All parties in that system want growth in some way, shape, or form. So, making sure that you’re clearly aligned on what growth you want, how and how you’re going to get it, is extremely important to the long-term outcomes.

02:24
And are there any underserved risks or markets that you think perhaps hold some real potential opportunities right now?

02:31
I think the biggest opportunity is right here in front of our eyes in California.

02:34
What we’ve seen is an industry that applied broad-stroke exposure management rules to a state, and you have to dig in because not all risks that are viewed as high-risk are bad risks.

So, it’s going to be those who chisel away at that, who add the complexity that some carriers don’t have the appetite for, who are the ones that are going to continue to see success in markets like Palpoint.