What Working with a Managing General Agent Actually Means

If you’re a construction insurance broker deciding whether to work with a Managing General Agent (MGA), you may have heard this popular phrase before, “we provide access to capacity”. On its own, it means almost nothing.  

An MGA might have plenty of capacity behind it, but if that capacity wasn’t built for the specific risk you’re trying to cover – it doesn’t solve the problem.

If you regularly place risks, you’ve probably: 

  • Turned to standard markets first, only to find they weren’t set up for genuine complexity 
  • Spent days chasing placements across multiple markets for a single risk 
  • Ended up with a premium that reflected the difficulty of the process as much as the actual risk profile 

General construction insurance capacity isn’t always calibrated to place complex risk. 

Partnering with a managing general agency like Exance can help you avoid the friction, slow responses, hard-to-explain conditions, and coverage gaps that emerge at claims stage.  

Read on to learn how an MGA can help you and exactly what you would be getting from the partnership.  

Looking for a specialist insurance MGA that understands complex risk?
Speak to our underwriting team today.

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What is a Managing General Agent?  

A managing general agent is an insurance intermediary that is given delegated underwriting authority by an insurer.

For a broker placing construction risks, partnering with an MGA can be beneficial because it speeds up the process and offers niche market expertise that traditional insurers may not have.  

At Exance we focus specifically on construction insurance and financial lines. This means we have a deeper understanding of the detail’s underwriters will be looking for in submissions and can typically turn around decisions much faster. 

You’re still placing the risk with genuine insurer capacity behind it – an MGA simply acts as the specialist underwriting layer in between.

What a Managing General Agent Actually Does

A Managing General Agent (MGA) is not a broker and not an insurer. 

Standard insurers writing broad books of commercial property and liability tend to assess risks against generic scoring criteria ֪– not specialist knowledge.  

A specialist construction underwriter works differently.  

At Exance, we specialise in construction-related insurance, and our underwriters work exclusively within those and adjacent lines.  

They have a broader understanding of:

  • The risk characteristics of design-and-build contracts and the coverage implications of different building methodologies.
  • The relationship between contractor financial health;
  • claims frequency and;
  • the specific exposure profile created by the regulatory environment post-Building Safety Act. 

It’s this depth of specialist knowledge that gives capacity providers the confidence to release capital through an MGA in the current market. 

A specialist MGA can also fill in the gaps that tend to surface later down the line at the claim stage. Cover that is properly matched to the risk at underwriting is less likely to leave you exposed when something goes wrong.  

At Exance we have access to rated insurance and reinsurance capacity to underwrite the complex risks you need placed.    

When you partner with us, you don’t just buy a policy – you gain access to a structured underwriting relationship built around the specific complexity of construction and financial risk which frees you to focus on managing your clients.  

What Delegated Authority MGA Means

Relevant capacity is only half the equation – it also needs to be available when you need it. 

The practical implication of our delegated authority MGA arrangements is speed. 

At Exance we have the authority to bind coverage without referring each case back to our capacity providers which allows us to move faster.  

A well-presented submission doesn’t need to pass through multiple layers of approval before you get a response. 

If you’re a construction insurance placement broker, this matters for several reasons: 

  • Client service: you can give clients a meaningful response faster, which is particularly important when they’re working to project timescales 
  • Negotiating position: you’re not managing a client while simultaneously chasing three markets for a quote 
  • Certainty: you know whether coverage is available earlier in the process, which allows you to manage client expectations with confidence 

Delegated authority also means the person making the underwriting decision is the person you’re talking to. There’s no “I’ll need to refer this upward” for most risks within our appetite.  

If a risk is within our scope, we can tell you where we stand – removing the bureaucratic friction of the broader market which speeds up the entire process. 

 

MGA Capacity UK: The Lines We Write

Relevant, responsive capacity still needs to cover the risks you’re placing. We provide access to capacity across a range of construction and specialist insurance lines along with a suite of financial lines: 

The common thread across these lines is complexity.  

These are not commodity risks. They require specialist underwriting expertise and they benefit from a relationship with an MGA that has built specific knowledge in each area.  

We’re the ideal partner if you need specialist capacity outside standard appetite. 

What You Get When You Partner with Us 

We provide access to tailored capacity that’s relevant to your project because it’s underwritten by specialists, not scored against broad criteria; available because delegated authority means fast, decisive answers that’s quickly accessible because the process is built around dialogue, not bureaucracy. 

The feedback we receive from broker partners consistently centres on these three themes:  

  • Clarity of appetite 
  • Speed of response 
  • Quality underwriting dialogue  

Clarity of appetite means knowing quickly whether a risk is something we can engage with, which cuts down on the time spent on a placement that isn’t going to work.  

We’ve invested in making our appetite framework as transparent as possible so that brokers can self-assess before submitting. 

Speed of response is a function of our delegated authority structure and our underwriting team’s experience. We aim to provide a substantive response to every submission within 48 hours. For risks clearly within appetite, it can often be within the same working day. 

The quality of underwriting dialogue matters most for complex submissions – the ones where you need to talk through the risk characteristics before making a placement decision. 

Our underwriters engage in those conversations. We don’t default to forms and scoring sheets when the risk needs a proper discussion. 

If you’re spending too much time managing market friction on construction submissions and need a specialist MGA that understands complex risk speak to us about becoming a registered broker partner today. 

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