Ep246 Mike Keating CEO, MGAA: No Bubble to be Burst

This week’s guest has probably the best 360-degree understanding of the insurance value chain of anyone I have had on the show.

This is because Mike Keating has a career that spans collecting insurance premiums in person and runs all the way through underwriting, backing MGAs, working for and founding MGAs, to working for Private Equity and helping find investment to start new insurance businesses.

Now Mike is putting all he has learned into running the Managing General Agents Association (the MGAA) the trade body that represents the MGA community in the UK and Ireland.

The MGAA’s members write around £15bn – or just under $20b – in GWP, so this is an organisation that carries quite a lot of weight in the market.

In this podcast we examine the reasons behind the continued success of the MGA as a vehicle for delivering underwriting talent and the prospects for their growth to continue sustainably into the future.

We also learn what is on the MGAA’s agenda, in terms of the lobbying work it does as well as what are the latest initiatives from the important educational and networking sides of the organisation.

But leaning on Mike’s broad experience, our topic ranges are far wider than that. For example, a large part of our discussion extends to include the application of AI in the MGA space.

With the average tenure of the underwriting paper backing MGAs hitting new highs, MGAs providing the preferred career path for many underwriters, and with someone as passionate and knowledgeable as Mike looking out for its interests, the future for the UK and Ireland MGA sector looks very healthy.

But most importantly Mike is great company and an insurance player through and through and the best possible reason to listen to this podcast is to get the benefit of some of the insights that his long experience has given him.

NOTES:
We mention Reg Brown. Reg is a Lloyd’s luminary who ran his own Syndicate and is the driving force behind founding the MGAA, as well as many other market-wide initiatives and collaborations, most notably the Insurance Museum, of which he is Chairman.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/reg-brown-62827313/

LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com

We also thank audio advertiser, The Insurance Network (TIN), organiser of the highly-successful TINtech events series and Data Jam. www.tin.events