Smarter Underwriting for MGAs: Using AI and Automation to Build Resilience

Managing general agents (MGAs) have long been the agile specialists of the insurance industry, serving as a vital bridge between insurers and niche markets. But today, MGAs are navigating a landscape of heightened capacity constraints, economic volatility, and increased scrutiny from carrier partners.

To maintain and grow their delegated authority and market relevance, MGAs need to evolve their core capabilities.

While pricing modernisation has attracted attention as one way to achieve resilience, underwriting also deserves equal focus. It remains a foundational function that shapes risk portfolios, impacts carrier confidence, and ultimately determines profitability. For MGAs with delegated underwriting authority, the ability to improve underwriting effectiveness isn’t just operational – it is critical to their success.

A Perfect Storm for MGA Underwriting

In recent years, insurers have become increasingly cautious about where they allocate capacity. Rising loss ratios, inflation-driven cost pressures, and unpredictable climate risks are now forcing carriers to re-evaluate their partnerships. MGAs are feeling the impact through tighter oversight, more rigorous audits, and growing pressure to justify every risk decision.

Yet, many MGA underwriting operations still rely on traditional methods, especially outdated technology.  Risk assessments are often based on static rules or underwriter intuition. Data is underutilised. Manual processes slow down turnaround times and limit scalability. In a constrained capacity environment, all of these shortcomings can be costly.

To sustain trust with carriers and protect their book of business, MGAs must take a more strategic, technology-driven approach to underwriting.

Underwriting as a Strategic Lever

Underwriting has always been about making smart decisions under uncertainty. But in today’s MGA market, it also has to be:

• Defensible: Carrier partners want transparency into how risk decisions are made.

• Consistent: Standardised underwriting criteria ensure fairness and reduce exposure to errors.

• Scalable: As MGAs grow, underwriting capacity must scale with them.

• Responsive: Real-time data and fast decisions are essential to meet broker and customer expectations.

By investing in technology that supports these pillars, MGAs can transform underwriting from a manual task into a strategic advantage.

The Role of AI and Real-Time Data

Advanced underwriting platforms now leverage AI and machine learning to analyse large datasets and predict risk with far greater precision than traditional methods allow. Instead of relying solely on basic demographic inputs or historical loss data, modern underwriting can incorporate:

• Telematics data for motor risks

• IoT and smart home devices for property coverage

• Third-party behavioral data

• Real-time weather or climate indicators

• Business operation metrics for commercial lines

This new level of insight allows MGAs to sort and prioritise applications more effectively, flag unusual or high-risk submissions, and tailor underwriting guidelines to reflect real-world conditions.

Additionally, these AI models can also be made explainable – ensuring that carriers have visibility into the “why” behind underwriting decisions. This transparency is essential for maintaining carrier confidence and compliance with regulatory expectations.

Automating the Mundane, Enhancing the Complex

One of the most immediate benefits of underwriting automation is the ability to streamline routine tasks. Rules-based engines can:

• Automatically approve low-risk submissions

• Route complex cases to experienced underwriters

• Trigger data enrichment based on application inputs

• Detect inconsistencies or missing information

This kind of automation reduces turnaround times, frees up underwriters to focus on high-impact cases, and improves overall productivity. And when paired with a centralised decision engine, MGAs gain a unified framework for managing risk logic across products, geographies, and channels.

A Platform Approach for Long-Term Value

Just as MGAs have started to modernise pricing through real-time data and intelligent optimisation, underwriting should be brought into the same ecosystem. Platforms like Earnix offer the advantage of combining pricing, rating, and underwriting in a single environment.

This unification enables MGAs to:

• Ensure alignment between underwriting criteria and pricing strategies

• Quickly adapt to market conditions with dynamic rules and models

• Demonstrate a coherent decisioning framework to carrier partners

• Use underwriting insights to inform future product design and capacity planning

With this kind of integrated platform, MGAs aren’t just reacting to capacity constraints –they’re building an operation that is agile, intelligent, and future-proof.

Use Case: Streamlining Commercial Property Underwriting with Real-Time Risk Intelligence

Consider the fictitious example of an MGA specialising in small commercial property insurance across coastal regions. Traditionally, their underwriting relied heavily on historical loss ratios and basic location data – ZIP code, occupancy, building age. But with climate risks escalating and carriers tightening coastal capacity, this approach became a liability. Delays were common, high-risk policies slipped through, and carrier confidence began to waver.

By adopting a platform like Earnix, the MGA integrated real-time weather and climate data, third-party property attributes, and localised CAT modeling into their underwriting workflow. With automated enrichment at the point of submission, the system instantly flagged properties in high-risk flood zones or with outdated roofing materials.

Low-risk submissions were auto-approved within minutes, while complex or borderline risks were routed to senior underwriters with pre-generated risk profiles and pricing suggestions already aligned to current capacity guidelines.

The results were immediate: underwriting turnaround dropped from days to hours, approval rates improved, and carrier audits revealed far fewer exceptions. Most importantly, the MGA could demonstrate to its carrier partners a transparent, consistent, and data-driven risk selection process –preserving delegated authority and opening the door to additional capacity.

Tech-Forward MGAs Will Win the Future

The underwriting landscape is changing fast, and MGAs must evolve to keep pace. Those who embrace AI-driven tools, real-time data, and process automation will not only gain operational efficiencies but also stand out as trusted, tech-savvy partners to carriers.

By turning underwriting into a strategic lever—one that complements pricing and enhances risk selection – MGAs can build the resilience needed to weather capacity pressures and drive sustainable growth.

In a market where “who you write” is just as important as “how you price,” smarter underwriting isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity.

To find out how Earnix can help your business, request a demo here.