The career path for a commercial insurance underwriter used to be predictable. Build technical expertise, take on more complex accounts, move into a senior underwriting role, and eventually have the opportunity to lead a team or a book of business.

The growth of MGAs is giving experienced underwriters another path.

The same people insurance organizations are trying to recruit, retain, and develop for future leadership have more places to go. Some of those opportunities are difficult to replicate inside a traditional carrier structure.

MGA Growth Is Increasing Competition for Experienced Underwriters

The MGA market has grown quickly. According to Conning, U.S. MGA direct premiums written increased 16% in 2024 to an estimated $114.1 billion, outpacing the broader property and casualty market. Conning also points to the continued movement of experienced talent from traditional insurers to MGAs as one of the factors supporting that growth.

MGAs need experienced underwriters to expand. When an organization is building a specialty program or moving into a new class of business, it needs people who understand the risks, know the market, and have the judgment to make good underwriting decisions.

Those are often the same people carriers are trying to recruit and counting on for future leadership.

An experienced underwriter who might once have looked at another carrier for the next step can now consider an MGA offering a very different kind of role.

What MGAs Are Offering Experienced Underwriters

When we talk with experienced insurance professionals about making a move, compensation is obviously part of the discussion. But so is what the person will be able to do in the new role.

Will they have more underwriting authority? Can they influence how the book is managed? Will they have a voice in appetite and strategy? Is there an opportunity to build a program or take on broader responsibility?

For someone who has spent years inside a larger organization, an MGA may offer the chance to have a more direct impact on the business.

Hiring an Experienced Underwriter Takes More Than Filling a Job

Most proven underwriters are working; they are not on job boards looking for work. They have relationships, credibility, and knowledge of their book. If you want them to leave, there must be a clear reason for the move.

Hiring processes tend to focus heavily on what the company needs: the experience required, the book that needs to be handled, and the responsibilities of the position.

Candidates look at it differently. What will I be able to do here that I cannot do where I am now?

That is a question hiring managers need to be prepared to answer.

If an MGA can offer greater underwriting authority, the chance to help build a program, or a clearer path to broader responsibility, a traditional insurance organization needs to be just as clear about what its opportunity offers.

It does not have to look like an MGA opportunity. It does have to give a successful underwriter a good reason to leave a position where they are already established.

The People in Your Succession Plan Are Being Recruited

The competition for underwriting talent does not stop with external hiring.

Most insurance companies have people they expect to move into larger roles. It may be a senior underwriter who could become an underwriting manager or someone with deep expertise in a specialty line who is expected to step up when a longtime leader retires.

The plan may make sense internally. The person in that plan, however, is also someone other organizations want to hire.

MGAs are looking for underwriters with technical knowledge, strong relationships, sound judgment, and enough experience to take on greater responsibility. Those are probably many of the same reasons someone has been identified as a future leader inside your organization.

This is where succession plans can become vulnerable without anyone realizing it.

A company may know exactly where it sees an employee three years from now. The employee may have no idea.

Meanwhile, another organization may already be talking to them about what their next three years could look like.

The Underwriters You Want to Hire Are the Same Ones You Need to Keep

MGA growth is giving experienced commercial insurance underwriters more choices about where they build their careers.

That affects the people you are trying to hire, but it also affects the people you already have.

Look at the underwriters you expect to move into larger roles over the next several years. Do they know you see that future for them? Are they getting the responsibility that will prepare them for it? Is the opportunity as clear to them as it is to you?

The same thinking applies when recruiting from the outside. Experienced underwriters need to understand more than the job you are hiring them to do today. They want to know where that job can take them.

The growth of MGAs will continue to create opportunities for people with strong underwriting experience. For insurance organizations, the question is whether the people they want to hire, and the people they want to keep, see enough opportunity to build their careers there.

About the author: Nelleke Maxwell is Co-Owner of Neeljym Search Group, a specialized recruiting firm serving the commercial insurance, engineering, commercial construction, manufacturing, and industrial sales industries. She works alongside clients and the Neeljym team to support business growth through recruiting, industry insights, and thought-provoking content focused on leadership and hiring.