RESOURCES

I always recommend this podcast as it provides a balanced cross-section of voices from across the industry. Below is a combined summary of 2 episodes on the subject of growth and cost rigor (Stephanie Ogden from Munich Re Syndicate and Timothy Gardner and Robert Bisset from Lockton Re).

Growth - there is growth out there, despite the softening market:
✅ Focus on long term relationship-based growth - spend time understanding clients' evolving requirements and use the soft market as an opportunity to innovate. The nature of changing risk landscape brings opportunities such as AI errors, crypto and ever-changing cyber risk.   
✅ Don't rule out new market entry - not all lines soften in all territories at the same time, there are pockets of opportunity in new and existing lines.
✅ Focus on broker facilities and delegated business as this is where capacity is flowing, exercising careful due diligence to ensure you're giving the pen to genuine experts.

Cost rigour:
✅ If your organisation hasn't figured out how to deploy AI at an enterprise level, identify stand-alone tasks that can benefit. For example, actuarial capacity can be freed up using AI to ingest unstructured data, convert it into structured data to fit curves and load to stochastic tools.
✅ Reduce product development 'waste' - consult brokers and clients before developing new products. (Sounds obvious but how many lines are launched based on a 'feeling' or what competitors are doing??). 

 Summary and my key takeaways:

✅ 57% of insurers expect to allocate more capacity to MGAs over the next two years.
✅ Specialty lines will see the most growth, specifically in nascent product lines like parametric insurance, climate risk and AI-driven solutions.
✅ The London Company Market is still the preferred conduit for growth but continental Europe has untapped opportunity.

Growth will not be without its challenges:

❗Regulation is cited by 46% of MGAs as the key barrier to new proposition development or new market entry.
❗Macroeconomic uncertainty is a concern for almost 70% of carriers.
❗Misalignment between the parties - many insurers favour Lloyd’s for their MGA growth but MGAs typically look to the Company Market.

📢 My conclusion from the above is that carriers and existing MGAs looking to grow in a scalable fashion need to focus on 2 key areas:

🔎The evolving EU regulatory approach to MGAs as EIOPA looks to standardise how it defines them (broker-like, carrier-like or a hybrid?)
🔎Investment in the automation of quote-to-bind, claims and technical accounting on a fit-for-purpose digital platform. 

Source:  MGAs set sights on specialty growth in 2026 | Insurance Business