The managing general agency (MGA) segment is entering a new era of strategic collaboration and rapid technological transformation.
According to AM Best, premiums underwritten by MGAs climbed to roughly $89.9 billion in 2024, marking the fourth consecutive year of double-digit growth. Amid this growth, capacity providers increasingly view such MGAs as sources of unique risk access and superior underwriting outcomes, instead of just distribution channels.
Rajiv Matta (pictured), chief innovation officer for MGA programs at MSI (part of The Baldwin Group), said MGA-capacity-provider relationships are reaching an inflection point in 2026, powered by strong underwriting performance and accelerated adoption of artificial intelligence (AI).
“We’re consistently outperforming the broader market, and our loss ratios are industry-leading at this point in time,” Matta told Insurance Business. “Because of that, MGAs are no longer something capacity providers or reinsurers are simply curious about - we are now part of their core strategy.
“I think that trend will continue, and you’re going to see more and more capacity providers entering the marketplace. There is a huge amount of appetite for strategic partnerships with MGAs that have consistently delivered outperformance versus the industry, and that will be a very prominent force in 2026.”
One of the most powerful engines behind the MGA transformation is the adoption of AI. At MSI, Matta said, the firm shifted to an “AI-first” mindset in 2025: integrating AI tools across product development, underwriting, claims, and other workflows.
As the broader insurance market becomes more competitive, he said MGAs and carriers that embrace AI are poised to outpace legacy players mired in older, disconnected systems. Matta is expecting a “leveling up” of capabilities with “winners and losers” emerging depending on their approach to AI adoption.
“There will be faster adoption among MGAs and among more forward-looking carriers, while legacy carriers with disconnected systems or persistent skepticism are going to start losing ground,” he observed. “That dynamic is going to be one of the most important forces shaping the market.”
But along with opportunity, AI is widening protection gaps, especially in the realm of cyber risk. As deepfake technology, voice cloning, and synthetic-media attacks proliferate, ordinary individuals, not just large corporations, are becoming targets for fraud.
Yet even as cyber risks escalate, adoption of personal cyber coverage remains modest. A 2025 report from Triple-I found that 56% of insurance agents said their customers “don’t understand or agree with the value” of cyber insurance.
Matta argues that MGAs are well-positioned to respond to this. By designing tailored personal-cyber products and leveraging AI to assess and price previously uninsurable risks (e.g., voice-cloning fraud), MGAs could play a central role in closing protection gaps.
As consolidation proceeds among distributors (brokers), capacity providers, and MGAs alike, the value proposition of nimble, data-driven MGAs only strengthens. For brokers acquiring new portfolios, or carriers looking to offload or access specialized risks, MGAs that can deliver tailored programs, efficient issuance, and consultative advisory services become more attractive.
Matta characterizes the ideal “high-value partnership” as one built around shared long-term vision that includes data sharing, collaborative product design, rapid go-to-market ability. Gone are the days, he said, of periodic, short-term engagements where parties “get in when rates are high, get out when appetite shifts.”
“I’d like to see more of those partnerships continue to grow,” he said, “with more carriers coming to the table, collaborating with MGAs early, and giving them the ability to whiteboard ideas and bring them to market without prolonged, bureaucratic approval processes.
“And as consolidation accelerates on the distribution side, I see MGAs working more closely with these larger, newly formed organizations, not only strengthening existing partnerships but also expanding the overall value proposition.”
