MGAs still a hotbed of insurtech innovation, says Insurtech Insights 2025 panel

By Chris Munro

June 6 - (The Insurer) - The insurtech MGA market remains a hive of creativity with platforms launching new solutions for underserved markets while also developing novel and innovative protections for traditional classes of business.

Those were just some of the points raised during a panel discussion at the Insurtech Insights USA conference in New York on Wednesday, with executives sharing their thoughts on how technology is supporting MGAs in their efforts to either establish or grow their foothold in their respective markets.

Some market commentators had expected more of an industry shake-up when the first insurtech MGAs came to market.

But after initial talk of an insurtech revolution within the MGA sector, it is increasingly accepted that technology will be an enabling force rather than a disruptive one.

Emilio Figueroa, head of insurance at Eventual Treasury, said the traditional lines of business are where most of MGA market entrants are coming into the industry, and as such, competition is mounting in those segments.

But Figueroa said innovative MGAs are also making plays in new areas.

“There's a lot of creativity happening with insurtechs,” he said.

“I’ve seen tax audit insurance, for example. Stuff that you don't really see. And MGAs and insurtechs have the capacity to bring in new products that are not as traditional as workers' comp or excess liability, general liability or auto, which is good, and it's just helping to stabilise on a societal basis, and it's good overall for the industry,” Figueroa added.

Allianz Reinsurance Management Services’ chief underwriting officer Arvind Krishnamurthy highlighted some of the “very cool and interesting” technology being used by MGAs.

“We see MGAs in the commercial auto space really utilising data telematics. We see MGAs in the property space doing very interesting things out in California with respect to wildfires. We see them in comp.”

While property is taking much of the market’s focus given the challenges posed by wildfire, Krishnamurthy highlighted that not everything is focused on that segment. Instead, technology is being embraced in “multiple lines of business”, he noted.

“From us, the reinsurer, the key thing is we need to understand how your machine learning, your data analytics, fits in with everything else that you're doing.”

As Krishnamurthy noted, for MGAs in the early part of their existence, their algorithms “aren’t going to be nearly what they were expecting”.

However, Krishnamurthy said over time, the expectation is those algorithms will improve significantly, driving a stronger performance at the MGA.