Why MGAs Are Redefining the Future of Insurance

In a slow-moving industry, MGAs are showing what happens when insurance gets lean and tech-enabled. Beyond disrupting legacy players, they’re rewriting how risk gets underwritten and delivered. If you want to understand where insurance is heading next, this is the model to watch. 

What is an MGA (and why are they growing so fast)

Managing General Agents (MGAs) are reshaping the insurance industry by innovating and moving faster than traditional carriers.

Unlike insurers, MGAs don’t carry risk on their balance sheets. They underwrite on behalf of capital providers, unencumbered by the capital requirements and solvency regulations that burden traditional carriers. This structural freedom creates the momentum MGAs need to enter markets quickly and meet emerging demand without red tape.

They win in niches. Whether it’s cyber, commercial property, or casualty lines, MGAs bring speed and focus where incumbents often lag.

Capital efficiency is another key edge. While insurers must hold multiple times the capital for every dollar of risk, MGAs don’t face that constraint. They can scale new products faster and test pricing in-market, all without the friction of holding capital.

Many MGAs resemble tech startups more than traditional insurers, as they operate cloud-native, API-first systems with lean teams and automation-first cultures. 

Coalition, Blue Zebra and what we can learn from them

Two MGAs stand out as proof of how fast and far this model can go.

Coalition launched in 2017 with a focus on cyber insurance and proactive risk monitoring for small and mid-sized businesses. Within a few short years, the company has a valuation of $5 billion, with revenue in excess of $300 million as of 2024. They eventually reached a point where they could underwrite their own risk, without needing providers to back it up. This evolution shows how MGAs can scale towards becoming an end-to-end value chain.

Blue Zebra offers an Australian take on the same playbook. Founded in 2017 by Colin Fagen, former CEO of QBE Australia & New Zealand, the company set out to prove that a lean, tech-enabled MGA could outmaneuver traditional insurers in SME and personal lines. The company now manages over $300 million in gross written premium with just 90 staff, running on its own platform built from scratch. In late 2024, Ardonagh Group acquired Blue Zebra and is using that platform as the foundation for a combined Australian MGA group.

Both companies started with lean operations, specialist underwriting, and a strong tech backbone. They represent what the future of insurance can look like when you build for agility and use technology to scale.

Challenges faced by MGAs

For all their momentum, MGAs still deal with friction that holds back performance and scale.

1. Poor visibility into portfolio performance. Most MGAs rely on lagging reports and fragmented dashboards. Without real-time data, it’s hard to steer the business or demonstrate underwriting discipline to providers.
2. Too much time spent on the wrong deals. Underwriters waste time on submissions that are either outside appetite or impossible to win. These misfires drain capacity and burn cycles that should be spent on high-quality opportunities.
3. Strategy that doesn't reach the front line. Many MGAs define their underwriting appetite informally in slide decks. However, consistency suffers if that strategy isn’t embedded in the workflow. Teams can’t operate at scale if every decision relies on tribal knowledge.
4. Relationships with capital providers. In the current landscape, reinsurance relationships are more important than ever. MGAs need to demonstrate both growth and discipline. If the portfolio doesn’t reflect the story told to capacity providers, trust erodes (and so does the funding).
5. Pressure to scale without bloating the team. Most MGAs aim to stay lean. But disconnected systems and manual workflows force them to add headcount just to keep up. This disrupts growth and increases costs over time.

How AI and modern systems are reshaping MGA efficiency

Today, many MGAs still run on Excel-heavy workflows and stitched-together legacy tools. This limits speed and introduces friction right when they need to be moving fast. Modernising these systems is a strategic priority for MGAs looking to capitalise on emerging markets and opportunities.

Here are three key ways AI-powered workflows can support MGA growth:

1. Proactive monitoring of market trends. Insurance revolves around documents, which are a prime use case for predictive analytics and insight generation. MGAs can use automated scraping tools to gather information from documents before feeding it to GenAI models for intelligent predictions on pricing and risk.
   
   
2. Streamlining operations. AI helps reduce manual overhead by handling routine tasks like data ingestion from third-party sources and report generation. At MISSION+, we recently provided a specialist team (led by battle-tested AI practitioners) to an MGA client, helping them replace a siloed legacy application with a modern core cloud platform designed for scale. As a result, underwriters can shift their focus to higher-value tasks, to accelerate business growth.
   
   
3. Credible reporting and analytics. The most successful MGAs have strong relationships with risk capital providers. These relationships hinge on trust and transparency. AI tools can help achieve these goals with real-time visibility into performance and intelligent reporting to demonstrate underwriting discipline.

TLDR: automation and AI reduce manual work, generate useful market insights, and cut friction across the value chain. That’s how MGAs can stay lean and continue to punch above their weight.

The future of insurance is already here

MGAs are no longer fringe players. Their tech-enabled execution can outperform legacy structures, proving there’s a better way to underwrite and scale.

The model works, and the momentum is real.

At MISSION+, we help modern MGAs move faster. Whether it's building scalable underwriting platforms, embedding AI into workflows, or designing systems that deliver clarity and control, our teams lead from the inside to unlock growth.

If you’re serious about building the next generation of insurance, we’re ready to help you ship.