MGA Software

MGA software is the set of systems a managing general agent (MGA) uses to run the underwriting it does for an insurance carrier: taking in broker submissions, checking them against each carrier's appetite, rating, quoting, binding, and reporting premium back to whoever supplies the capacity. An MGA writes under delegated underwriting authority, so its systems carry a second burden on top of speed. Every policy has to be provably inside the box the carrier drew, and the MGA is the one who has to show it.

There is a lot more of this business to support than there was five years ago. AM Best put direct premiums written through delegated underwriting authority enterprises at $108.7B for 2025, up from $92.3B a year earlier, in its June 30, 2026 report Managing General Agents Adapt to Changing Demands and Added Scrutiny, and found underwriting authority in more than 75% of the MGA contracts it reviewed. The same report says carriers have become choosier about where they put capacity. When an MGA's underwriter sends a larger account up for referral, what usually travels is the MGA's own write-up in its own format plus the raw broker documents, and the carrier's underwriter checks that against the program guideline before approving limits and price. If the MGA's data is thin or inconsistent, that conversation gets longer.

What does MGA software do?

Few MGAs buy all of this as one system, and the usual picture is a policy system bought years ago, a rater per line (sometimes an Excel rater the carrier sent over), a shared submissions inbox, and whatever the team built to get bordereaux out the door at month end. Mapped to the path a submission takes, the pieces look roughly like this:

• Submission intake and clearance: the broker email lands with an ACORD 125, a loss run or two and a schedule, and someone has to check whether another broker already sent the same account.
• Appetite and guideline checks: does this risk fit the carrier that would back it, on class, limit and territory?
• Rating and quoting, usually in the rater for that line.
• Binding, issuance and endorsements, which is where the policy system does its real work.
• Carrier reporting, meaning the premium and claims bordereaux each capacity provider wants on its own schedule and often in its own template.
• Claims handling, for the MGAs whose carrier contracts include claims authority.

Why do MGAs need different software from carriers?

An MGA answers to one or more carriers for every policy it writes, so its systems have to keep the carrier's rules and records in view at each step, which a carrier's own underwriting desk rarely has to do. The NAIC Managing General Agents Act (Model 225, 2002), which states adapt into their own laws, shows how much the contract has to contain. It requires the written contract between insurer and MGA to set underwriting guidelines covering the maximum annual premium volume, the basis of the rates, the types of risks that may be written, maximum limits, exclusions, territorial limits, cancellation provisions and the maximum policy period. It also requires the MGA to keep separate records of the business it writes, to render accounts and remit funds to the insurer at least monthly, and it requires the insurer to review the MGA's underwriting and claims operations on site at least semi-annually.

Read as a systems spec, that list is fairly demanding. An MGA with three capacity partners can end up checking one trucking submission against three sets of class, limit and territory rules, and in a lot of shops that check still lives in an underwriter's head or a spreadsheet tab. Monthly accounts are only as good as the policy and premium data underneath them. When the carrier's audit team sits down for its review, much of the time goes into tracing each figure back to the document that supports it.

How do MGAs choose MGA software?

Most MGAs we talk to already have a policy system and raters their carriers signed off on, and very few want to rip those out. In our experience the gap sits in the layer in front of those systems, the part that reads the submission, checks it and gets an underwriter to a decision. The buying questions tend to look like this:

• Can it sit on top of the policy system and raters the carriers already approved, or does it need a migration first?
• How good is the data at intake, given that a misread loss run follows the account all the way to the monthly bordereau.
• Can appetite rules be kept separately for each carrier, which matters most once there are two or more capacity partners.
• How fast does it go live, and can the MGA start with its worst bottleneck and add the rest later?

We would put intake accuracy first on that list, and we think most comparisons underweight it, partly because speed is easy to show in a demo while the cost of a wrong class code or a loss year that got dropped shows up weeks later, as a guideline breach someone has to explain, a corrected bordereau line, or an awkward half hour in the carrier's next review, and by then nobody remembers that the quote went out fast.

How does Pibit AI fit into an MGA's software stack?

Pibit AI is the AI Underwriting OS for commercial, specialty and E&S insurance, and it is built in modules so an MGA can start with the step that slows it down most. The six stages are Intake & clearance, Extraction & research, Triage & risk analysis, Rating & pricing, Quote & bind and Portfolio management, and an MGA can buy one module or the full OS and run it inside the systems it already has. For MGAs with several capacity partners, the Intake & clearance module can route each submission to the carrier whose coded appetite rules fit the risk, and in Verified mode, with our human-in-the-loop, data reaches 99.9% workflow accuracy, guaranteed in the contract, before it moves on to rating or reporting. A module is typically live in a few weeks, with no implementation fee. For a closer look at how MGAs evaluate the intake side, see our guide to MGA submission automation software, and for the reporting side, our piece on bordereau ingestion automation.