MGA software: what should MGAs look for in a pricing and underwriting platform

MGAs have always needed to move quickly.

They need to respond to brokers, bring new products to market, manage capacity relationships and make good underwriting decisions, often with smaller teams than traditional insurers.

That flexibility is one of their biggest advantages.

But as an MGA grows, the systems that helped it get started can become the systems that hold it back.

Spreadsheets multiply. Data ends up in different places. Referrals rely on email. Pricing models become harder to control. Underwriters spend more time moving information between systems and less time looking at risk.

This is where MGA software is meant to help.

But not every platform solves the same problem. And choosing technology because it has the longest feature list is unlikely to lead to the best result.

The better question is: what does an MGA actually need its pricing and underwriting platform to do?

Start with the way your underwriters actually work

Technology projects often begin with systems.

They should probably begin with people.

Underwriters need to make decisions quickly. They need the right information in front of them, clear pricing guidance and an obvious route when something falls outside appetite.

If a new system makes those tasks more complicated, adoption will suffer regardless of how sophisticated the technology is.

Good MGA software should make the underwriting process simpler.

That means bringing submissions, pricing, referrals, approvals and quote generation into a connected workflow rather than asking underwriters to jump between different tools.

The objective is not to automate every decision.

It is to remove unnecessary manual work so underwriters can spend more time applying judgement where it actually adds value.

This is something we see repeatedly when working with pricing and underwriting teams. Successful technology supports the way people work rather than forcing people to work around the technology.

Can you keep the pricing models you already trust?

For many MGAs, valuable intellectual property already exists in Excel.

That is not necessarily a problem.

Spreadsheets remain popular because actuaries understand them, they are flexible and they make it relatively easy to build, test and change pricing logic.

The problem comes when a spreadsheet designed for model development becomes part of a production underwriting process.

Models are emailed between people. Different versions appear. Manual data entry increases. Integration becomes difficult and governance becomes harder as volumes grow.

Replacing everything is one option.

It is not always the best one.

A modern platform should allow an MGA to turn existing pricing models into scalable applications without recreating years of actuarial work.

This means the pricing team can continue developing models using familiar tools while the business gains the controls, integrations and scalability expected from modern software.

For MGAs with established pricing capability, that can be a much more practical route to transformation than rebuilding everything from scratch.

Avoca Risk provides a good example. The MGA wanted to modernise the infrastructure around its existing proprietary rating model rather than replace the model itself. By making the rater available through a cloud-based environment with API access, validation and version control, it could retain the pricing logic it already trusted while improving how that model was deployed and governed.

Does pricing connect directly to underwriting?

Pricing and underwriting are closely connected in the real world.

Their systems should be too.

A pricing model might calculate the technical price, but an underwriter still needs to understand the risk, consider appetite, handle referrals and make a commercial decision.

If pricing sits in one system while underwriting takes place somewhere else, information has to move between them.

That creates friction.

Good MGA software should connect pricing directly into the underwriting workflow.

A submission arrives. The relevant information is captured. The correct pricing model runs. Rules determine whether the risk can proceed or requires referral. The underwriter sees the information they need. The decision and its reasoning are recorded.

The process becomes connected rather than a sequence of hand-offs.

That matters increasingly as MGAs look to grow without simply adding more people to process additional business.

How does the platform deal with referrals?

Not every risk should go straight through.

Nor should every risk require manual intervention.

One of the most important functions of an underwriting platform is knowing the difference.

Referral rules should be configurable around appetite, authority, pricing thresholds and other underwriting criteria.

When something falls outside those rules, it should reach the right person with the information required to make a decision.

This sounds straightforward, but it is where poorly connected systems can create considerable inefficiency.

An underwriter should not have to search through emails, spreadsheets and different applications just to understand why something has been referred.

The system should tell them.

For growing MGAs, effective referral management is not just about speed. It is also part of demonstrating consistent underwriting control to carriers and capacity providers.

Can it help you quote faster?

The short answer is yes. We understand that speed matters.

Brokers are unlikely to value a technically advanced underwriting platform if it takes three days to get a straightforward quote.

But speed to quote is not simply about making the pricing engine run faster.

A significant amount of time is often lost before pricing even begins.

Information arrives by email. Documents have to be opened. Data needs to be copied into another system. Missing information has to be identified. Someone then needs to decide where the submission should go.

Connecting these stages can have a much greater impact than optimising one individual calculation.

Modern platforms can increasingly use AI in insurance underwriting to extract information from documents, structure submission data and help triage incoming business.

That does not mean handing underwriting decisions over to AI.

It means using technology to remove administrative work before an underwriter needs to apply judgement.

What happens when volumes increase?

A system that works for a small book does not automatically work for a larger one.

Growth creates pressure in places that may not be obvious at the start.

More submissions mean more pricing calculations, more referrals, more data, more users and more integrations.

That makes scalability an important consideration when assessing MGA software.

• Can the platform process larger volumes without creating operational bottlenecks?
• Can new products be introduced without rebuilding the system?
• Can additional pricing models be deployed easily?
• Can workflows change as underwriting appetite changes?
• Can new distribution partners connect without creating another manual process?

Intermont faced exactly this challenge as its specialist MGA portfolio grew. With approximately €120 million in premium, manual underwriting processes, fragmented data and spreadsheet-based pricing were making it harder to scale while maintaining consistent governance and portfolio visibility. The answer was not to discard the rating models the business already relied on, but to bring pricing, underwriting and reporting into a more controlled digital environment.

MGAs are often successful precisely because they can move faster than larger organisations. Technology should preserve that advantage rather than gradually removing it.

How strong is the governance?

Growth also creates another challenge: control.

Carriers and capacity providers need confidence that business is being written within agreed parameters.

Pricing teams need confidence that the correct model is being used.

Management needs to understand what has been quoted, referred, declined and bound.

That requires more than a dashboard.

A good platform should provide clear version control, permissions, audit trails and records of underwriting decisions.

It should be possible to understand which pricing model produced a result, which rules were applied, who approved a referral and what changed over time.

For an MGA, governance should not mean adding friction to every decision.

The best systems make good governance part of the normal underwriting process.

Can you get the data back out?

Every quote creates useful information.

• What risks are brokers sending?
• Where are referrals occurring?
• Which products convert?
• Where are rates changing?
• Which parts of the portfolio are performing differently?

Yet when pricing and underwriting take place across spreadsheets, inboxes and disconnected systems, much of that information becomes difficult to use.

One of the biggest benefits of digitising the process is therefore not simply automation.

It is creating structured data.

Connecting pricing and underwriting allows MGAs to understand what is happening across the book and use that information to improve future decisions.

RB Jones, a well-established underwriting manager and wholesale insurance specialist, faced a similar challenge around improving underwriting efficiency and gaining better insight from its data. Bringing underwriting information into a more structured digital environment helped create a clearer view of activity and performance, while reducing reliance on fragmented processes.

That also creates the foundation for more advanced analytics and AI.

AI is considerably more useful when it can work with structured operational data rather than trying to piece together information scattered across different systems.

Does it integrate with the rest of your technology?

No underwriting platform exists in isolation.

MGAs may need to connect with broker portals, policy administration systems, CRM platforms, data providers, document systems, payment platforms and carrier technology.

Replacing every existing system is rarely practical.

That makes integration an important part of choosing MGA software.

APIs allow pricing models and underwriting workflows to connect with other systems without requiring everything to sit inside one application.

This gives MGAs more flexibility to modernise gradually rather than attempting a large-scale replacement programme.

It also reduces the risk of creating another technology silo while trying to remove the old ones.

How quickly can you change it?

• Insurance products change.
• Pricing changes.
• Risk appetite changes.
• Capacity changes.
• Regulation changes.

Technology that is difficult to change will eventually become a constraint, however well it works on day one.

MGAs should therefore look beyond implementation and ask how easily the platform can evolve once it is live.

• Can underwriting rules be changed without a major development project?
• Can a new pricing model be deployed quickly?
• Can workflows be adjusted as products evolve?
• Can new data sources be added?

The ability to change the system may prove just as important as the capabilities it has when you buy it.

That flexibility is also part of the buying decision. Solertia Insurance, an MGA specialising in complex transaction tax risk, selected its underwriting workbench with rapid implementation, workflow functionality and future scalability among the considerations. For a specialist MGA, the ability to adapt the platform as the business develops can matter as much as the initial feature set.

The right MGA software should help you stay an MGA

There is an irony in technology transformation.

MGAs often invest in systems because they are growing, but the wrong system can remove exactly the characteristics that made that growth possible.

• Speed.
• Flexibility.
• Specialist knowledge.
• Commercial judgement.

The aim should not be to turn an MGA into a highly standardised processing operation.

It should be to use technology to remove the tasks that do not require specialist expertise while giving underwriters better information when judgement really matters.

For most MGAs, that means looking for a platform that can connect existing pricing models, underwriting workflows, referrals and data while maintaining governance as the business scales.

The best MGA software will not simply automate more processes.

It will make it easier for the business to do more of what it already does well.

Looking to modernise MGA pricing and underwriting?

→ Explore how Optalitix helps MGAs connect pricing and underwriting, automate manual processes and scale existing pricing models within a secure, governed platform.

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