MGA

UK MGA Insurance Market Report 2026

UK MGAs wrote about £7.2bn of premium in 2025, up a fifth. Lloyd's, the FCA, the PRA and the capital behind MGAs spent the same year deciding how much of it to trust.

On 22 April 2026 a Volante spokesperson gave The Insurer a single sentence: “Volante can confirm that it is no longer proceeding with a new syndicate.”

Volante began as an MGA group, was bought by Acrisure in 2022 and opened Lloyd’s Syndicate 1699 that year. In August 2025 Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan withdrew its capital. Management planned to move the business into a new vehicle, Redwood Underwriting, which had until 1 April to raise its capital. It did not.

On 19 June Syndicate 1699 went into solvent run-off. Rivals took the pieces: Aviva’s Probitas hired the Canadian team, and Amiga Specialty bought the professional indemnity renewal rights.

Five weeks later, on 27 July, Cinven and La Caisse bought a majority of Optio from Preservation Capital Partners. When Preservation first invested in 2018, Optio wrote £35m of premium. By the sale it wrote more than £460m, through more than 60 capacity providers and 18 offices. It was the largest UK insurance distribution deal of 2026.

Both stories come from the UK MGA market, a few weeks apart.

A managing general agent (MGA) is an intermediary that underwrites insurance on behalf of an insurer or Lloyd’s syndicate under a delegated authority agreement. The MGA prices, binds and usually services the policies; the insurer provides the balance sheet and carries the risk. At Lloyd’s, an MGA holding binding authority is called a coverholder.

The main findings, as of October 2026:

  • Howden Re estimates UK MGA premium at about £7.2bn in 2025, up roughly 20% from £6.0bn. MGAA members, who also write international business through London, report more than £18.5bn.
  • Delegated business is 39% of Lloyd’s premium on the count Rachel Turk gave as chief underwriting officer in 2024, and about 45% on the Lloyd’s delegated authority page.
  • In December 2025 the FCA decided that an MGA cannot act as lead manufacturer of a co-manufactured product. Only an insurer or a Lloyd’s managing agent can.
  • MGA and specialty deals were a record 27% of UK insurance distribution M&A in the first seven months of 2026, while total deal volume fell 22%.
  • 77% of MGAs and 91% of carriers say the claims process between them needs improvement. In 2023 the MGA figure was 59%.

UK MGA market size in 2026

There is no official figure for the size of the UK MGA market, and the numbers in circulation measure different things.

The most careful estimate is in Howden Re’s European MGA report, Filtered for quality, published on 8 May 2026: approximately £7.2bn of UK MGA premium in 2025, up from £6.0bn in 2024. London writes so much international and coverholder business that, in Howden’s words, “isolating UK-only MGA premium is more complex.”

The Managing General Agents’ Association counts its members instead. In January 2026 it reported around 460 members, more than 250 of them MGAs, “collectively underwriting over £18.5bn in gross written premium”. That includes London business for risks around the world.

Howden cites the MGAA at about £15bn for 2024 and £18bn for 2025. Both series grew by roughly a fifth. They describe two different markets.

Two measures of the same market, a factor of 2.5 apart

UK MGA premium, £bn. Howden Re counts UK-only business; MGAA members also write international and Lloyd's coverholder premium through London.

£0bn£5bn£10bn£15bn£20bnHowden Re, UK-only estimateMGAA member premium2024£6bn£15bn2025£7.2bn£18bn

Howden Re, Filtered for quality, 8 May 2026 (MGAA figures as cited in the same report)

Most articles still quote a third number: “Over 300 MGAs underwrite more than 10% of the £47 billion UK general insurance market.” It appears in coverage from June 2022 and was still being repeated in July 2026, on the same £47bn base. Ten per cent of £47bn is £4.7bn, below every current estimate.

The MGAA’s own membership gives a cleaner signal of how many firms there are. The association launched in 2011 with 40 MGA members. Its 2026 annual report, covering the year to 31 July, counts 270, up from 249 a year earlier.

MGAA full MGA members, 2022 to 2026

Count of MGA members in each MGAA annual report. The association had 40 at its launch in 2011.

07515022530020222023202420252026187206233249270

MGAA annual reports, via Milliman (Sep 2025), Reinsurance News (Aug 2025) and Insurance Times (Aug 2026)

The member premium series is less reliable than the head count. MGAA members wrote more than £7.3bn when the association signed its 200th member in June 2023. The 2024 annual report gave more than £13.2bn, an 80% jump on roughly 30 extra members, which points to a change in what was counted rather than growth.

The shape of the membership is clearer. In January 2026 the MGAA put its members’ book at about 85% commercial lines and 15% personal lines. More than 90% distribute through brokers and more than 90% outsource claims to a third party. About half are Lloyd’s coverholders, down from 65% in the association’s 2019 membership survey.

The UK against the rest of Europe

Howden Re’s regional table, which includes Lloyd’s coverholder business, puts total European MGA premium at €20.8bn in 2025, up from €18.8bn. The UK accounts for €8.35bn of it.

The UK writes more MGA premium than the next two European markets combined

MGA gross written premium by market, 2025, €bn. Includes Lloyd's coverholder business.

€0bn€2.5bn€5bn€7.5bn€10bnUK€8.3bnBenelux€3.8bnItaly€3.3bnFrance€1.3bnGermany€1.1bnNordics€0.8bnIberia€0.5bnRest of Europe€1.8bn

Howden Re, Filtered for quality, 8 May 2026, Figure 2

Scale is concentrated. Howden finds that MGAs writing €25m or more are about 30% of European MGAs by number and produce 70 to 85% of the revenue. Below them sit around 400 smaller firms. Since 2024, by Howden’s count, only 10 to 15 new MGAs of real quality have launched across Europe.

Profitability is harder to see. Most UK MGAs file small-company accounts, and MGA loss ratios against the open market are not published. The closest proxy is Insurance DataLab’s annual analysis of MGA filed accounts: revenue up 17.1% in its 2025 edition, passing £1bn, then up 8% to £1.2bn in 2026.

The samples are not identical, but the slowdown matches what carriers describe. Revenue per employee rose 12.2%, to more than £203,000.

“Growth remains strong, but the dynamics underpinning it are changing.”
David Flandro, head of industry analysis and strategic advisory, Howden Re

Lloyd’s delegates 40% of its premium and wants proof it is managed

In September 2024 Rachel Turk, then Lloyd’s chief underwriting officer, gave the market a number: “Currently 39% of gross written premium is generated through delegated arrangements and that’s excluding service companies.”

Lloyd’s delegated authority page now says about 45%, or US$26.2bn a year, on a different basis. The category spans consortia, line slips and broker facilities as well as coverholders.

Lloyd’s has been here before. Poorly managed delegated business was one of the causes of the loss-ratio deterioration Lloyd’s suffered from 2013 to 2019. Turk’s comment on that period was short: “We must not make the same mistakes again.”

Her Q2 2025 market message set the terms. The slides read “If capabilities cannot be evidenced, restrictions will be imposed”. Coverage of the briefing quoted her more directly.

“If coverholders are not managed well, restrictions will be imposed on the ability to delegate authority.”
Rachel Turk, chief underwriting officer, Lloyd’s, May 2025

She added: “We will not allow passive followers.” A syndicate that follows another syndicate’s lead onto a binder without its own oversight is the target. According to PwC’s summary of the Lloyd’s 2026 market oversight plan, every managing agent now has a dedicated delegated authority oversight manager at Lloyd’s, from January 2026.

All of this happened in a softening market. Lloyd’s wrote £57.9bn of gross premium in 2025, up 4.2%. Volume rose 10.3% and price fell 3.7%. The combined ratio was 87.6%, still very profitable, and slightly worse than 2024’s 86.9%.

The London company market is moving the same way. The International Underwriting Association’s 2025 statistics report, covering 79 firms, shows premium written through delegated authority rising from £4.28bn in 2023 to £4.81bn in 2024, an increase of 12.3%.

New carriers built around delegated books

Over the past year private capital has started building Lloyd’s syndicates whose purpose is to back delegated business.

On 31 October 2025 The Fidelis Partnership launched Syndicate 2126 with three years of dedicated capacity from Blackstone, targeting about US$300m of premium in 2026, partly through its Pine Walk MGA platform.

In December, AIG, Amwins and Blackstone announced Syndicate 2479, also about US$300m, built from a slice of Amwins’ roughly US$6bn of delegated premium, with Amwins putting in its own capital. In September 2026 Lloyd’s gave in-principle approval to Cedar Trace’s US$300m syndicate for 2027, which includes a delegated direct book.

“Our partnership with Amwins and Blackstone represents the next level of innovation.”
Peter Zaffino, chairman and chief executive, AIG

Volante’s syndicate failed in the same window. Capital is still competing to back delegated books at Lloyd’s, and it is choosing books with a long record and a large, visible data set.

Where UK MGA capacity comes from

The MGA Opinion Report 2025, published by Clyde & Co with the MGAA in July 2025, asked carriers what they planned to do. The answers were more generous than the soft market would suggest. The report does not publish its sample size, which limits how far the numbers can be pushed.

Carriers told Clyde & Co they would give MGAs more, not less

Share of carriers surveyed for the MGA Opinion Report 2025: did not cut MGA capacity despite higher capital costs, expect to add within two years, added in the past year. Sample size not published.

0%25%50%75%100%Did not cut capacity74%Will add within 2 years57%Added in last 12 months46%

Clyde & Co and MGAA, MGA Opinion Report 2025, July 2025

Carriers expected to put most of that capacity into specialty (29%), financial lines (20%) and property (17%). Mike Keating, the MGAA’s chief executive, summarised the mood in an August 2025 column: “MGAs are not pulling back, they’re doubling down.”

Capacity is also being committed for longer. DUAL UK, part of Howden, signed a five-year agreement with Zurich and Liberty Specialty Markets in October 2025. Jensten Underwriting signed five years and more than £300m with Zurich UK in June 2026.

In October 2026 Arkel, owned by Atec Group, secured £380m from AmTrust, with its binder extended to 2031. Its premium had grown 40% in two years.

“In the last five years, we’ve gone from being the new kids on the block.”
Kris Lee, chief underwriting officer, Arkel

Most capacity is still placed one year at a time. Geoffrey Lubert, global head of programme solutions at Gallagher Re, describes MGAs bundling programmes to buy “bigger blocks of capacity”, still with one heavy renewal each year.

The fronting carriers

A growing share of UK MGA paper comes from hybrid fronting carriers, which issue the policy, keep a slice of the risk and reinsure the rest. Bridgehaven, the first UK-authorised hybrid fronter, launched in July 2023 and expected about £500m of premium by the end of 2025 across 15 MGAs. It keeps 10 to 20% of the risk.

New entrants keep arriving. Pinion launched in February 2026 with up to US$180m of preferred equity from Barings, aiming to write in the UK and EU from 2027. On 7 September 2026 Aviva launched a hybrid fronting offer through its Global Corporate & Specialty arm, initially for MGA facilities of £20m or more.

“If you’ve got an MGA that only excels in a hard market, it doesn’t give you that longevity.”
Paul Dilley, chief underwriting officer, Bridgehaven

The US, where fronting is older and better measured, shows the risks. Conning reported in August 2026 that US fronted premium grew 17% in 2025 to more than US$22bn. Initial accident-year loss ratios have been adverse in each of the last seven years, and five fronting carriers have exited or scaled back.

Reinsurer appetite swings fast. Gallagher Re found Munich Re and Swiss Re cut their US MGA participation by more than half in 2024, then reported Munich Re’s assumed MGA premium up 74% in 2025.

The insurer that walked away

Covéa Insurance lost £87.3m after tax in 2023, with a combined ratio of 116.9%. In an Insurance Post interview in October 2024, chief executive Georges de Macedo said Covéa would not work with MGAs again, and that control of underwriting was central to its return to profit.

The next year Covéa made £32.9m after tax, on premium that fell from £711.3m to £641.5m. In 2025 it made £72.4m, at a combined ratio of 91.6%.

The MGA exit was one of several changes in that turnaround. It is still the clearest UK case of a capacity provider choosing control over delegated growth and saying so.

Policy Expert went the other way. The personal lines MGA signed a six-year deal with Accredited in 2022, targeting £2bn of premium, then in November 2024 added Bridgehaven in a £1bn co-insurance arrangement split equally between the two fronters.

The regulators moved, and the pressure lands on the insurer

Three UK supervisors changed their approach to delegated authority in the twelve months to October 2026. None of them wrote rules addressed to MGAs. Each one asked insurers to prove they control what their MGAs do.

The FCA kept MGAs out of the lead role

On 9 December 2025 the FCA published PS25/21, Simplifying the insurance rules. Firms that manufacture a product together can now name one lead firm, “solely responsible for all of PROD 4.2 compliance” and liable for redress. The lead must be an insurer or a Lloyd’s managing agent: “an insurance intermediary cannot be a lead firm”.

The FCA recorded in its own policy statement that most respondents disagreed. “The majority wanted us to allow intermediaries, in particular Managing General Agents (MGAs), to be permitted to lead.” It explained its decision by pointing to its 2024 product governance review.

“Where products were developed and designed by intermediaries it was more likely that firms could not demonstrate these products delivered fair value and good outcomes, as required by PROD. ... Insurers are also more highly capitalised than intermediaries to meet claims and to pay redress if required. Therefore, for now, we will not extend the lead role to intermediaries.”
FCA, PS25/21, December 2025

Sheila Cameron, chief executive of the Lloyd’s Market Association, called the package “a missed opportunity for meaningful simplification in the commercial and specialty insurance sector.”

Keating wrote in January that sole MGA manufacturing would have been “a logical step”. By March the FCA had confirmed that documented responsibilities need not be duplicated, and he said: “It’s a credit to the regulators.”

The same policy statement did help commercial MGAs in a less visible way. It replaced the old large-risks test with a “larger commercial customer” category, aligned with Ombudsman eligibility, and retail-level product rules and the Consumer Duty no longer apply to those customers. For an MGA sector that is 85% commercial, that may matter more in practice than the lead-firm decision.

A second consultation leaves a mismatch. CP26/23, which closed on 18 September, would split Consumer Duty manufacturers into a principal, the firm with “substantive control over the design or operation” of a product, and secondaries with lighter duties. The control factors include distribution strategy and value proposition, which MGAs often own.

But the FCA adds: “We do not expect these proposals to impact firms subject to PROD 4.” If both stand, an MGA could be principal manufacturer under the Duty and still barred from leading under product governance. Final rules are due in early 2027.

Claims oversight, findings due early 2027

The FCA’s first annual insurance priorities report, on 24 February 2026, committed it to “expand our review of firms’ oversight of outsourced claims processes, to include different delegated authority models and remuneration arrangements”. Findings are due in early 2027.

The groundwork was a July 2025 review of home and travel claims at 23 firms. Five insurers that had outsourced most of their claims had limited control over them, and “generally, the MI used by firms to oversee these arrangements was inadequate”.

The FCA’s principle: “Firms may outsource elements of their claims handling, but they cannot outsource their regulatory responsibilities.”

Lisa Sturley, the FCA’s head of insurance, put it more briefly at an MGAA claims conference in February, as reported by I Love Claims: “You can delegate – but you can’t abdicate.”

This is the part of the regulatory agenda that touches MGAs most directly, because more than 90% of MGAA members outsource claims. The MGA Opinion Report shows how far apart MGAs and carriers already are.

Both sides say MGA claims handling needs fixing, and more of them each survey

Share saying the claims process between MGAs and carriers needs improvement.

0%25%50%75%100%MGAs, 202359%MGAs, 202577%Carriers, 202591%

Clyde & Co and MGAA, MGA Opinion Report 2025 and 2023

The two sides also disagree about whether anything is improving. 58% of MGAs said claims communication with carriers had got faster. 60% of carriers said they had seen no such progress.

“The claims process is the moment of truth for insurance, and right now, we’re failing to make meaningful improvements.”
Mike Keating, chief executive, MGAA

The PRA asked insurers how they would get out

The Prudential Regulation Authority’s 2026 priorities letter, signed on 15 January by Gareth Truran and Shoib Khan, gave delegated authority a section of its own for the first time.

“Delegated authority business looks set to grow across the London Market, raising additional risks of inadequate pricing and reserving across the sector if not properly managed or overseen. ... firms should ensure they have strong oversight arrangements in place to govern and monitor the performance of these arrangements, including consideration of how they would exit unprofitable arrangements.”
PRA, Insurance supervision: 2026 priorities, 15 January 2026

The same letter described a softening cycle “particularly pronounced in some wholesale lines in the London Market”. The PRA writes to insurers, not MGAs, but its expectations reach MGAs through the binder. Insurance Business reported in August that capacity providers are starting to ask for audited claims management information and evidenced customer outcomes as standard renewal terms.

Enforcement has not followed. We found no FCA fine against an MGA in 2025 or 2026. The reference case is still Aderia, Coverall and Millburn in 2016, a delegated authority chain for solicitors’ professional indemnity that ended in £15.5m of penalties and payments to insurers.

Private equity and the UK MGA deal market

UK insurance distribution M&A fell sharply in 2025. MarshBerry counted 99 announced deals, down more than 35% and the lowest total in eight years, worth just over £2bn. MGA-related deals were the exception, rising from 12% of activity in 2024 to 17% in 2025.

In 2026 the share kept rising. By the end of July MarshBerry counted 47 deals, 22% fewer than a year earlier, but specialty and MGA transactions were a record 27% of the total. Private equity was behind more than half of them.

Valuations explain why. Howden Re puts diversified specialty MGA platforms at about 15 to 16 times EBITDA, with single-line MGAs one or two turns lower. Retail broker multiples compressed through 2025.

“An MGA should not be valued in the same way as a traditional (retail) broker.”
Armand Hoftijzer, managing director, MarshBerry

CFC, the London cyber and specialty MGA that became a Lloyd’s carrier, sits at the top. In February 2026 Bloomberg reported that EQT and Vitruvian had hired advisers for a sale or listing at around £5bn. Against 2024 adjusted EBITDA of £153.2m, that is roughly 33 times on our arithmetic. No deal had been announced by October.

Most UK MGA prices go undisclosed. Ryan Specialty paid about US$250m for Castel Underwriting Agencies and its 13 London MGAs in May 2024. Admiral agreed to buy Flock, the fleet MGA, for £80m in February 2026, a modest price against the venture era.

Brown & Brown bought Pardus Underwriting in October 2025. Markerstudy agreed in May 2026 to sell its MGA arm to Saturn Holdings, a fellow Pollen Street company. Arrow Global bought Fusion Specialty Group in July.

Accelerant, the MGA risk exchange that supplies capacity to many UK MGAs, made the round trip in thirteen months. It listed in July 2025 at US$21 a share, reached a valuation of US$6.4bn, fell as low as US$9.36 in February 2026, and in August agreed to be taken private by Thoma Bravo at US$20.25.

Bubble or paradigm shift

Ben Canagaretna, global managing director at ARCAS, argued the bull case in a sponsored viewpoint in The Insurer in September 2026.

“I don’t think the MGA boom is a bubble; it’s a paradigm shift.”
Ben Canagaretna, global managing director, ARCAS

His evidence is the last hard market, when MGAs gained share instead of losing it. Others doubt that a soft market will treat them as well.

Camila Trejo of Howden Capital Markets & Advisory: “Strong top-line growth is no longer sufficient on its own.” Jeremy Riley of FTI Consulting: “Soft market conditions are beginning to weigh on underlying performance.” Keating, at the MGAA conference in July: “We cannot ignore the headwinds which are in place.”

The best-known UK insurtech MGAs have mostly reached profit. ManyPets made about £10m before tax in the year to March 2026. Cuvva made £11.5m after tax in 2024 and hired advisers to explore a sale. Zego’s chief executive says it was profitable in 2025. None of the 2021 valuations has been tested by a public sale.

The capital layer is where things broke

We found no UK MGA that went into administration in 2025 or 2026. The failures happened one level down, in the capital behind the MGAs.

Volante is one. Wakam SA is the other.

On 25 September 2026 the French regulator, the ACPR, temporarily barred the white-label carrier from new business and renewals after a balance sheet clean-up reopened its 2025 accounts and left it short of its solvency requirement. Wakam SA provides paper for MGAs and insurtechs across Europe. Its UK sister is a separate, PRA-regulated company.

“The UK hasn’t got any of these problems – it’s solvent, profitable and growing.”
Mark Christer, chief executive, Wakam UK

Before that, R&Q’s collapse forced the sale of Accredited, the MGA fronting platform, to Onex for US$420m in 2024, below the US$465m agreed the year before. In 2023 the Vesttoo fraud, about US$3.36bn of fake letters of credit used as reinsurance collateral, led AM Best to review every fronting carrier it rates.

For an MGA, the practical question is whose paper it writes on, and what happens to its book if that paper is withdrawn tomorrow.

Data, bordereaux and the five-month lag

Turk described the data problem at an InsTech event in March 2025, as reported by Insurance Times.

“If you’re getting data three months after the fact and then spending another month cleansing it, you’re five months behind.”
Rachel Turk, chief underwriting officer, Lloyd’s, March 2025

She gave an example of what the lag does. Two managing agents on the same coverholder can hold different pictures of the same book: “If one thinks it’s a 70% loss ratio and another thinks it’s 50%, that’s a problem.”

The standards have moved slowly. Lloyd’s Coverholder Reporting Standards are still at version 5.2, released in August 2019. The market’s Core Data Record reached delegated authority only in June 2026, when the LMG Data Council opened a two-week consultation on a delegated authority extension aligned with the computable binding authority agreement.

“The extension of the CDR into delegated authority is the final piece of the CDR jigsaw for the market.”
Joe Brace, operations director, Lloyd’s Market Association

The central platform that was supposed to fix market data will not. Lloyd’s announced on 19 March 2026 that Blueprint Two would be sunset, with Velonetic moving to incremental delivery. MGAs and their capacity providers will reach a common data standard through their own systems, not through a market platform.

The cost shows up inside MGAs. Broadstone and InsTech surveyed 98 UK MGAs at the end of 2025 and found that data preparation takes 40 to 50% of actuarial project effort. Among MGAs with one to five staff, 57% rely on their capacity provider for actuarial support. Among MGAs with more than 500 staff, none do.

Data is also becoming something MGAs can trade for capacity. Accelerant’s Risk Exchange holds 156 million rows across more than 62,000 risk attributes from its member MGAs. Through it, Bspoke Underwriting secured a five-year capacity deal worth £50m a year in February 2026.

We looked for a primary UK figure on late or incomplete bordereaux and did not find one. The widely repeated “10 to 20% late” figure traces only to a vendor blog, so it is not used here.

AI adoption has run ahead of governance

Intersys reported at the MGAA conference in July 2026 that more than 80% of MGAs use AI and only 52% have a formal governance framework. It did not disclose its sample.

The LMA’s April 2026 survey found 93% of managing agents had a framework in place or in development, from 39 respondents. In the US, Vertafore found only 21% of MGA staff use AI. The definitions differ too much for any one of these to be a headline.

“The challenge is that adoption has happened much faster than governance.”
Mark Kirby, professional services director, Intersys

The uses are practical: reviewing submissions, triaging claims, extracting and comparing documents. Darren Powell, chief underwriting officer at Pinpoint UK, describes the limit in one line: “AI is not a substitute for underwriting expertise.”

Underwriters are moving to MGAs while total hiring shrinks. Nick Grazier of Bspoke Group says “the war for talent in the MGA sector remains intense.” Caroline Wagstaff, chief executive of the London Market Group, says London market hiring was “down by 25% last year” and is forecast to fall another 25%.

What the MGAs that last have in common

Lloyd’s wants live data from coverholders. The FCA wants claims management information that boards actually review. The PRA wants insurers to know how they would leave an unprofitable binder. Capacity providers are writing audited claims MI into renewal terms. Investors are paying 15 times EBITDA for platforms that can show underwriting quality and less for those that only show growth.

Each of them is asking an MGA for evidence: of its loss ratios, its claims outcomes, its controls, and its ability to report all three on demand rather than five months later.

The MGAs that signed long capacity deals this year could provide it. Arkel had two years of 40% growth behind it. Bspoke traded its data for five years of capacity. Jensten got five years from Zurich.

Volante lost its capital and could not find the next backer in a market that had become selective.

That turns an MGA’s systems into a commercial matter. Capacity providers are pricing bordereaux produced from the policy system rather than assembled in spreadsheets, claims data they can audit, and product changes that ship in weeks. Allianz UK took its Slick Cover MGA from concept to first policy in under six months; SSP, a vendor with an interest in the comparison, puts the usual launch cycle at three to six months.

Openkoda is one way to build that. It is a highly customizable policy administration system, used as MGA insurance software, and the MGA owns the code, so the data model, workflows and bordereaux reporting can follow each capacity agreement rather than a vendor template.

It is not as feature-complete as the established policy administration suites, which carry decades of functionality. It suits MGAs that put control, speed and owning their stack ahead of the breadth of a managed product.

The US side of the market, where AM Best has cut its outlook on the channel to stable, is covered in our MGA market analysis.

UK MGA insurance: frequently asked questions

Is an MGA an insurance company?

No. An MGA underwrites and often services policies under authority delegated by an insurer or Lloyd’s syndicate, but it does not carry the risk on its own balance sheet. The insurer does. In the UK most MGAs are regulated by the FCA as insurance intermediaries.

How big is the UK MGA market?

Howden Re estimates UK-only MGA premium at about £7.2bn in 2025, up from £6.0bn in 2024. MGAA members report more than £18.5bn, a figure that includes international business written through London. The MGAA had 270 MGA members in its 2026 annual report.

Who regulates MGAs in the UK?

The FCA regulates MGAs as intermediaries for conduct, including the Consumer Duty and product governance rules. The PRA supervises the insurers that give MGAs capacity, and Lloyd’s oversees coverholders through its managing agents. In practice much of the oversight reaches an MGA through its capacity providers.

What is a Lloyd’s coverholder?

A coverholder is a company authorised by a Lloyd’s managing agent to enter into insurance contracts on behalf of its syndicate, under a binding authority agreement. About half of MGAA member MGAs are Lloyd’s coverholders.

Sources and method

Figures were taken from primary documents where possible and checked against the original; where only press coverage of a named source was available, the article attributes it. Estimates that measure different things are presented side by side rather than combined. US data is labelled as US. The main sources:

  • Howden Re, Filtered for quality, European MGA report, 8 May 2026
  • MGAA annual reports 2024 to 2026 and January 2026 priorities release
  • Clyde & Co and MGAA, MGA Opinion Report 2025
  • FCA PS25/21 (December 2025), CP26/22 and CP26/23 (June 2026), Regulatory Priorities: Insurance (February 2026), home and travel claims review (July 2025)
  • PRA, Insurance supervision: 2026 priorities, 15 January 2026
  • Lloyd’s full-year results 2025, Q2 2025 market message, delegated authority pages
  • IUA London Company Market Statistics Report 2025
  • MarshBerry UK insurance distribution M&A releases, November 2025 to August 2026
  • Broadstone and InsTech, MGAs and Actuaries in 2026, February 2026
  • Insurance DataLab MGA performance reports 2025 and 2026, Conning and Gallagher Re US MGA reports, company announcements and trade press as cited

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