News
MGA Premiums Hit $108.7 Billion in 2025 as Capacity Scrutiny Tightens
Managing general agents wrote a record volume of direct premiums in 2025, but carrier partners are growing more selective, signaling a shift from expansion to discipline across the segment, according to a market segment report from AM Best, as reported by Risk & Insurance.
The big picture: MGAs have posted five consecutive years of double-digit premium growth, cementing their role as a critical channel for specialty and hard-to-place risks. Now, as the excess and surplus lines tailwind fades and carriers demand stronger underwriting track records, the segment faces a more guarded capacity environment.
By the numbers:
- $108.7 billion in direct premiums written by MGAs in 2025, up from $92.3 billion in 2024.
- 17.8% premium growth for MGAs, compared to 5% for the broader U.S. property/casualty industry.
- Nearly 800 unique MGAs met the NAIC reporting threshold in 2025, roughly 50 more than the prior year.
Insuring America, BEGININGS: Risk in a New Republic
To celebrate 250 years of insurance in American history, Business Insurance presents Insuring America, a five-episode series debuting weekly starting from July 4, 2026.
Explore the distinct and indispensable role insurance played in shaping America and capitalism itself through interviews with historians and professionals in some of the country's oldest risk companies. Paired with archival photos, custom footage and an interactive timeline, the history of insurance in America is brought to life.
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Beginnings: Risk in a New Republic explores colonial commerce, early fire insurance, marine trade and the origins of an industry that would help shape the nation.
Autonomous sees slower commercial pricing, mixed growth signals for US P&C insurers
Autonomous, an independent investment research firm, expects the second-quarter 2026 earnings season for US property and casualty (P&C) insurers to centre on slowing commercial insurance pricing, the balance between profitability and growth in personal lines, and the ability of insurance brokers to maintain organic growth in a softer market environment.
The firm expects most commercial lines insurers to post another solid underwriting performance for the second quarter, despite the ongoing possibility of losses from non-catastrophe weather events.
However, Autonomous believes investor attention will increasingly shift towards the pace of pricing declines, with commercial insurance rates continuing to moderate across both admitted and excess and surplus markets.
Although the effect of lower pricing has not yet been fully reflected in underwriting margins, Autonomous notes that analysts’ premium growth forecasts have become less optimistic since the start of the year. The firm says this follows reports from insurers of rate reductions exceeding 30% across parts of the US large-account property market.
Insurity Unveils Agenda for Excellence in AI & Insurance, Showcasing How Insurers Are Turning AI into Operational Advantage
Insurity, a leading provider of cloud-based software for property and casualty insurance carriers, brokers, and MGAs, today announced the full agenda for Excellence in AI & Insurance, its annual conference designed to help insurers navigate the increasingly complex operational demands reshaping the industry.
A major focus of this year's event is the practical application of artificial intelligence across the insurance value chain. The conference agenda is built around the operational and strategic challenges insurers can no longer afford to postpone. Carriers and MGAs are being asked to improve underwriting performance, evaluate increasingly complex risks, modernize aging technology environments, manage growing regulatory expectations, and determine where AI can deliver measurable business value. Sessions throughout the event are designed to help attendees address these priorities with targeted strategies, real-world examples, and peer-led insights.
"The insurance industry has reached an inflection point where AI is moving from isolated use cases into core operational uses," said Jatin Atre, Chief Executive Officer of Insurity. "This year's agenda reflects the areas where insurers are making the most significant investments, from underwriting intelligence and geospatial risk analysis to claims automation, compliance, and platform modernization. The agenda focuses on the decisions insurers are making right now to create measurable business value, improve execution, and compete more effectively in an increasingly demanding market."
Climate/Resilience/Sustainability
Wildfire risk drives 84% spike in California home insurance costs in 5 years, Stanford study finds
While fast moving wildfires continue to threaten wide sections of California, another deepening crisis is smoldering.
Researchers at Stanford examined the forces driving what they say is an 84% increase in average homeowners' insurance premiums over roughly the last five years, according to their report.
Michael Wara, JD, PhD, directs Climate and Energy Policy for the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment at the Doerr School of Sustainability.
"Well, we've seen rapid acceleration in the cost of fire in homeowners' insurance in the places where there is high wildfire risk. An important result from our paper is also that prices in the low-risk areas are still under control, you know, so there's sort of a this is like an 80-20 problem where 80% of the market where there's low risk is doing fine, 20% of the market, maybe 10 to 20% of the market, where risks are high is we've had an availability problem where it's been," Wara said.
He says that's driven an expanding section of the market into the FAIR plan, the state-mandated insurance market of last resort. According to their analysis, the percentage of new mortgages backed by the more expensive FAIR plan coverage has now quadrupled to 5%. Making it more costly for many home buyers trying to enter the housing market
Awards
Snapsheet Named a Luminary in Celent's 2026 North America P&C Claims Systems Report
Snapsheet, the cloud-native claims management platform built for the way P&C claims work across all lines of business, today announced it has been named a Luminary in Celent's newly released P&C Claims Systems: 2026 North America Edition report. This is Celent's highest distinction across the 66 claims systems evaluated.
Celent, a leading global research and advisory firm for financial and insurance technology, published the report on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, following months of in-depth research, data analysis, and direct interviews and demos with participating claims systems providers across North America.
Each system was evaluated across three core dimensions: Advanced Technology, Breadth of Functionality, and Customer Base and Support. Using its proprietary Technical Capability Matrix, Celent places each qualifying solution into one of five tiers: Luminary, Technology Standout, Functionality Standout, Noteworthy Solution, and Developing Solution based on the sophistication of its technology and breadth of functionality.
AI in Insurance
Ranking: Who Are the Insurance Industry’s AI Talent, Maturity Leaders?
One out of every 50 employees working at a group of 30 large insurers is an AI specialist, according to an analysis published by a benchmarking firm
This is a preview of some of our exclusive, member only content. If you enjoy this article, please consider becoming a member.
Ranking: Who Are the Insurance Industry’s AI Talent, Maturity Leaders?
One out of every 50 employees working at a group of 30 large insurers is an AI specialist, according to an analysis published by a benchmarking firm, which ranks Allianz, AXA and Chubb as AI talent leaders.
For London-based Evident, an intelligence platform that specializes in tracking AI adoption across financial services, measures of AI talent leaders include counts of AI specialists in carrier workforces and assessments of carriers’ AI development programs.
An AI talent score is one component of the Evident AI Index for Insurance—a metric developed by Evident to gauge the overall AI maturity of a selected group of large insurance and reinsurance firms. DETAILS
Insurer AI Exclusions Spark Policyholder Alarm on Coverage Gaps
Companies that develop or use AI-generated content will likely either find themselves on the hook for any related litigation or regulatory probes or paying through the nose for insurance coverage as carriers race to limit their own liability.
Some insurers in recent months have adopted exclusions, based on standard policy language made available last year by Verisk Analytics Inc.'s Insurance Services Office, over claims related to generative artificial intelligence, according to industry professionals. Those exclusions, which insurers can attach to commercial general liability policies, focus for now on losses from bodily injury, property damage, or personal and advertising injury arising from policyholders’ use of generative AI.
Some carriers are going even further.** W. R. Berkley Corp. announced a ***first-of-its-kind “absolute” AI exclusion* last year, including for claims against a policyholder’s directors and officers.
Those provisions, some of which go beyond the use of generative AI, are poised to leave policyholders exposed to a wide range of claims, including over their AI-related disclosures and how they oversee the technology in their business operations.
Insurance AI Is Stuck in Low-Risk Mode | Insurance Thought Leadership
The squeeze in underwriting profits is sustained across the insurance market, driven by persistently high loss and expense ratios. A combination of rising catastrophe activity, social inflation and increasingly complex commercial risks is compounding margin volatility. While the sector has returned to around sub-95 combined ratios, profitability remains highly sensitive to small shifts in the operating environment. This volatility, combined with growth opportunities including cyber risks, climate events, and liability coverage, has made underwriting discipline a necessity rather than a luxury.
According to Camunda's State of Agentic Orchestration and Automation 2026 report, almost two-thirds (65%) of insurers admit there is a gap between their agentic AI vision and the current reality. While many firms report experimenting with AI agents, only 11% of projects reached production last year. If this pattern continues, insurance firms risk hitting an automation ceiling — one where AI agents compound operational complexity and fragmented IT systems, rather than strengthening underwriting profitability and reducing loss ratios.
Jawwad Rasheed is a financial services transformation lead at Camunda
Announcements
FirstService Residential Launches Resilience First to Help Communities Prepare for Water, Fire and Storm Losses
FirstService Residential, North America's leading residential property management company, announced the launch of Resilience FirstSM, a practical risk management program designed to help communities reduce the risk of avoidable damage, strengthen preparedness and support a more coordinated response before and after water, fire, and storm-related incidents.
Created to support community associations and high-rise properties, Resilience First unites FirstService Residential's expansive local footprint and expertise to unlock greater value for the communities it serves. Central to this approach is collaboration with companies that lead their industries with unmatched scale and capability – First Onsite Property Restoration, Roofing Corp of America, and FirstService Insurance Brokers – each recognized for advancing innovation and service in residential communities.
Together, they enable boards and property management teams to take a more proactive approach to managing property risk.
"Resilience First reflects our commitment to helping the properties we manage anticipate risk, strengthen preparedness and respond with confidence when incidents occur," said Bob Cardoza, chief operating officer of FirstService Residential. "By leveraging our scale and the expertise of trusted partners, we are giving our managed communities and high-rises access to the proactive planning, coordinated support and responsive resources they need to better protect their properties and the people who call them home."
Research
Protection gap, uninsured risk becoming larger economic challenge
Economic losses continue to rise faster than insured losses, according to a new analysis from Moody's Ratings and Moody's Analytics.
Natural catastrophes are creating a growing financial challenge for governments, businesses and households as economic losses continue to rise faster than insured losses, according to a new analysis from Moody's Ratings and Moody's Analytics.
The report examines the expanding insurance protection gap, or the difference between total economic losses from insurable events and the portion covered by insurance. It highlights the way uninsured risk is becoming a significant economic concern.
The protection gap is particularly evident in the United States, where coverage varies significantly by peril and geography. Moody's estimates that less than 20% of average annual earthquake losses in the U.S. are covered by insurance. In California, one of the nation's most earthquake-exposed states, coverage levels are even lower, with less than 15% of losses insured.
The gap is not typically driven by insurers failing to pay claims. Instead, Moody's identifies several contributing factors, including limited insurance availability or affordability, low consumer awareness, coverage exclusions, deductibles, policy limitations, and losses that are difficult to insure, such as supply chain disruptions, emergency response costs, and lost tax revenue.
"The protection gap is a systemic social and economic problem," Moody's noted, as uninsured losses often fall on governments, businesses, households, and financial institutions that must absorb the costs after disasters occur.
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Recommended Events
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