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John Lloyd OBE, Chairman of McGill and Partners. Delivered the keynote address at the MGAA Annual Conference in London on 7th July 2026.
Decades in the insurance market teaches you to distinguish genuine inflection points from noise. Over my time in the market, I have witnessed my fair share of hard and soft market cycles, watched distribution models rise and fall, and seen more than a few confident predictions about the future of insurance distribution turn to dust. So when I say that the MGA sector today is at the most consequential inflection point in half a century of broking, that is not a promotional claim but a considered judgement earned through decades of watching the market at close quarters.
The numbers alone are extraordinary. Global MGA gross written premium more than doubled between 2019 and 2024, rising from roughly $70 billion to $150 billion at a compound annual growth rate of sixteen per cent. In the United States, MGA direct premiums written reached $109 billion in 2025, representing five consecutive years of double-digit growth and a ninety per cent cumulative premium increase since 2020. In Europe the picture is even more striking, with over 650 MGAs generating close to €18 billion in gross written premium, and emerging markets from Iberia to the Nordics showing remarkable momentum. Here in the UK, MGAs now manage more than ten per cent of our £47 billion general insurance premium pool.
Behind every data point, though, is a specialist underwriter who chose to build something, an entrepreneur who saw a gap, had the courage to fill it and went deep where others went broad. That entrepreneurial spirit is the beating heart of this sector, and right now it is stronger than at any point in living memory.
For most of the past half-century, the capital behind delegated authority came from a relatively narrow pool of traditional carriers and Lloyd’s syndicates. That landscape is now almost unrecognisable. Major balance sheet reinsurers reduced their participation in MGA programmes significantly in 2024, in some cases by more than fifty per cent, and what is filling the gap is not more of the same but something structurally different: insurance-linked securities, sidecars, collateralised reinsurance, and vehicles backed by institutional investors who see the MGA model for what it is – a high-quality, specialist underwriting business generating genuine returns.
For MGAs, this abundance of options brings a corresponding responsibility to be deliberate about the choice of capital partner. The best capital relationships are strategic rather than transactional, built on trust, transparency, and aligned incentives, and in a market that is now firmly softening, the quality of those partnerships will be the difference between thriving and merely surviving.
Backing MGAs has been dubbed in the market as ‘a bad bet in the majority of cases,’ pointing to volume-based incentive structures, excessive intermediation, and the risks of outsourcing underwriting while retaining risk. Criticism such as this has resulted in some defensiveness across the market, but I would argue that defensiveness is the wrong response here. The right one is honest self-examination followed by action.
This critique is not without merit in certain parts of the market. There are segments where growth has outpaced governance, where alignment between MGAs and their capacity providers has been insufficient, and where underwriting discipline has been stretched in pursuit of premium. The soft market will expose all of that, as it always does, because the cycle is the great equaliser and it has a long memory for complacency. A pattern familiar to anyone who has lived through previous turns: everybody is a hero in a hard market, and the real players only reveal themselves when conditions tighten.
The MGA model itself, however, is emphatically not a bad bet. The sector has delivered four consecutive years of double-digit growth precisely because it creates value through specialist expertise, speed to market, and innovation that traditional carriers cannot replicate, and MGA loss ratios have improved to the point where they are, in many segments, industry-leading. The answer to the criticism lies not in argument but in evolution: more skin in the game, tighter governance, real-time data transparency, and institutional-grade underwriting platforms. The market is already moving in that direction, and the best MGAs are leading it.
The MGA sector is not a niche corner of the insurance market but a global force managing hundreds of billions of dollars in premium, driving innovation, and attracting some of the finest talent in the industry. The model works, the opportunity is vast, and whether the sector truly deserves its moment is a question each participant must answer through their own conduct.
McGill and Partners, the independent global specialty insurance and reinsurance broker, has been named in The Sunday Times Best Places to Work 2026 (Big Organisations) and awarded Overall Best Company for Wellbeing, recognising the firm’s distinctive culture and sustained investment in its people.
McGill and Partners achieved an overall engagement score of 88 per cent, with an employee response rate of 84 per cent — significantly above both financial services and global benchmarks.
The firm delivered consistently strong results across all areas measured, including a wellbeing score of 89 per cent and a pride score of 90 per cent. Colleague sentiment was similarly high, with over nine in ten employees reporting that they feel proud to work at the firm, that the organisation cares about their wellbeing, and that they would recommend it to others.
The Sunday Times Best Places to Work accreditation recognises organisations achieving at least a 70 per cent engagement score across key measures including reward and recognition, information sharing, empowerment, wellbeing, instilling pride and job satisfaction.
These results reinforce McGill and Partners’ differentiated approach to building a high-performance culture. The firm operates a single global profit centre with broad-based colleague ownership, underpinned by its ‘Contract of Trust’ – a commitment to autonomy, accountability and mutual respect. This model, combined with a focus on handpicked talent and a compelling colleague value proposition, sets the business apart in an industry typically shaped by bolt-on acquisitions.
With more than 580 colleagues across 10 offices in six countries, McGill and Partners has scaled rapidly since its launch in 2019. While the award reflects the experience of its UK workforce, the firm views it as a foundation for its ambition to be recognised as a leading employer globally and to continue attracting the highest calibre talent in the market.
McGill and Partners, the independent global specialty insurance and reinsurance broker, in partnership with certain carriers in the London market, has launched a bespoke aviation insurance solution that addresses significant, unmitigated risk within the aviation sector. Coverage is specifically designed to protect aviation spares against war perils while on the ground – filling a crucial coverage gap in traditional policies.
Historically, aviation hull war policies have only covered spares for war perils while they are in transit by sea or air, leaving ground-based assets exposed. With no existing protection against war perils on the ground, airlines and lessors are exposed to significant financial loss. With individual aircraft engine values approaching USD 50 million, the absence of ground-based war peril coverage creates a direct and material risk to the balance sheets of both airlines and lessors for these multi-million-dollar assets.
McGill and Partners’ new policy is designed to provide ground-based war coverage and protection for spares and equipment located on the ground and not in transit by sea or air. It provides war perils coverage for physical loss or damage resulting from war, invasion, acts of foreign enemies, hostilities (whether war be declared or not), civil war, rebellion, revolution, insurrection, martial law, military or usurped power or attempts at usurpation of power. The solution will have defined limits with a sum insured per item, subject to a defined annual aggregate limit.
The announcement comes at a particularly crucial time for the market, with conflict in the Middle East, in particular seeing airports acting as key targets for those actors involved.
This report sets out our 2025 gender pay gap reporting information for McGill and Partners UK.
Our strategic priority remains to increase the representation of women in senior roles and the upper pay quartiles. We are confident that by continuing to focus on hiring, developing, and promoting our talented female colleagues, we will achieve sustainable and meaningful change.
You can read our full report here.
To review our previous reports, please click below.
McGill and Partners and American International Group, Inc. (NYSE: AIG) today announced a significant strategic collaboration for the subscription market that will provide clients with seamless access to exceptional insurance solutions, backed by long-term, high-quality insurance capacity and capital. As part of the initiative, AIG and McGill and Partners will leverage agentic AI capabilities to manage the deployment of capacity to clients.
Through the collaboration, AIG performed a detailed analysis of McGill and Partners’ specialty portfolio, validating its strength and quality. Based on this analysis, the company created underwriting criteria to enable real-time underwriting through McGill and Partners’ digital broking platform. As a result of this approach, AIG expects to deploy meaningful capacity of 25% across up to $1.6 billion of McGill and Partners Gross Premiums Written specialty portfolio.
The analysis of McGill and Partners’ portfolio by AIG was made possible by the digital-first approach the broker has adopted since their launch in 2019. Utilising its tech-enabled platform, McGill and Partners provided access to high-quality data and insights to enable AIG to underwrite the portfolio and to use an agentic AI approach to manage its performance in the future.
AIG collaborated with Palantir to build an ontology of McGill and Partner extensive portfolio. By leveraging McGill and Partners’ digital broking platform in addition to Palantir’s Foundry platform, AIG will develop comprehensive insights on business underwritten, including near real-time exposure, limit deployment, modelled risk outputs and loss information. This access to near real-time data analysis will allow AIG to manage the performance and deployment of AIG’s capacity to McGill and Partners’ clients on an ongoing basis.
This strategic collaboration sets a new industry benchmark and significantly evolves the model for pre-secured capacity across a diverse specialty portfolio of risk. With industry leading capabilities from AIG, McGill and Partners’ brokers can focus on working with leading underwriters to develop the best possible solutions for clients. McGill and Partners’ clients will gain access to valuable long-term capacity from AIG and stability and security in an increasingly volatile risk landscape.
Steve McGill, CEO, McGill and Partners, said: “This collaboration has the potential to disrupt the dynamics of the subscription market. It strengthens the value proposition of leading underwriters in the market and redefines the way capacity is positioned in the best interests of our clients. This moves beyond incremental change and repositions the way the market operates in the future.”
Peter Zaffino, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, AIG, said: “The rapid evolution of AI and large language models is reshaping risk analytics, giving us the ability to continuously learn from McGill and Partners’ portfolio and deploy capacity with greater insight, discipline and speed. By using McGill and Partners’ robust data ingestion capabilities along with Palantir’s Foundry platform, we are able to evaluate their portfolio to align with our risk appetite, and over time, we see significant opportunity to deliver greater efficiency to the subscription market while giving clients easier access to high-quality insurance solutions.”
We are pleased to share we have renewed our Ukraine War Risks Reinsurance Facility for another year, with the maximum line per risk increasing from $50m to $100m.
More than $100m of cover has already been placed for the benefit of businesses operating in Ukraine, allowing vital industries such as energy production, manufacturing, warehousing, food and battery energy storage, to access the cover they need.
The facility is designed to support local Ukrainian cedants, including ARX, the insurer we first collaborated with, by providing the reinsurance capacity needed to protect commercial property in the region against war related risks faced by their clients.
The increase in capacity reflects a marked expansion in carrier participation, which has more than doubled and now stands at 14 insurers, including Aegis London, Atrium, AXIS, Liberty Specialty Markets, The Fidelis Partnership, and Westfield Specialty International.
Participating carriers have committed $250m in the aggregate for the next 12 months, reflecting the significant expansion in per risk and aggregate capacity available for Ukrainian clients.
The facility supports Ukrainian businesses during the current conflict and aids the economic recovery afterwards. The renewal of the facility has been designed to accommodate future investments, which may require larger limits, that are anticipated during Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Chris Stevenson, Head of Property, Casualty, and Construction at McGill and Partners said: “This is the only facility in the market that offers these kinds of limits at this scale, and we’re committed to ensuring it continues to provide meaningful support to businesses operating in such difficult circumstances. We’re pleased to be able to increase the limits and provide access to critical cover to support Ukrainian businesses as they navigate the devastating effects of war and look to rebuild in the future.”
In an interview with Artificial, our Group COO, Nick Williams-Walker, explains why embracing digital capabilities is no longer an option but an imperative for brokers. He details our strategy of embedding AI along with smart placement and contract building into our workflows to become faster, more responsive, and to empower our colleagues to solve our clients’ most complex risk challenges:
For brokers at the beginning of their digitalisation journey, or early into it, what factors do they need to consider around their data capabilities?
If you look back to two years ago, you would probably say you needed to have your data in an incredibly structured format, and that you would need to spend 18 months in a dark room on data models before you could apply it to any tech.
That’s all changed now, and this is why I encourage people just to start; otherwise you could end up in the preparation phase forever. With our partnership with Google, we can now take unstructured data and get it into a usable state very quickly, but it’s still true that to make advances, brokers will have to get away from using just the Microsoft Office tool set.
A digital contract builder is the minimum a broker will need in the near future. There are many tools out there to digitise PDFs and documents, but that of itself won’t be enough to match appetite and trade quickly with carriers as they trade more algorithmically. Digitisation after the event isn’t sustainable.
In the London wholesale broking market in the near future, what capabilities around systems will become ‘table stakes’ to be competitive?
This isn’t groundbreaking, but in addition to a contract builder tool, it’s the ability to connect platforms together through APIs now, and probably agents in the future. That should be absolute table stakes today, but it’s amazing how much legacy technology in the London market still isn’t API-enabled. And then there’s different areas of the value chain.
The ability to trade and communicate with data, to receive and distribute data to clients and carriers – that should become table stakes very soon – but that’s just the front end of the business. There are other aspects just to maintain margin, and that means the transaction has got to be digitised.
To what extent can tech partners undertake a lot of the heavy lifting for brokers daunted by what transformation means for legacy systems, connectivity and data flows?
In previous years, everyone wanted the silver bullet of an amazing end-to-end policy admin system, but it never materialised. Hundreds of millions were spent trying to do it but in reality, it became back-office systems. Now firms like Artificial, are putting tools into the hands of brokers that support their activities in delivering great outcomes for clients, and interacting with markets.
The strategy at McGill and Partners is that we do not see any future with a single end-to-end policy admin system. We have strong partners like Artificial, who are providing everything around smart placement and contract building.
We also use Salesforce, for example, for everything related to clients, contracts and our sales pipeline, and then Google Cloud operates everything around our data. Because those platforms now have such great connectivity, you can easily plug in things like KYC and other elements to improve the client experience but also ensure operational efficiency savings. Brokers can now knit these things together in a fairly seamless way using tools like Mulesoft.
With just a few London brokers at the forefront of digitalisation, do you think these leaders will create a competitive dynamic that accelerates change?
There are economics in play, of winning more clients and operating more efficiently, and creating digitalised facilities, so there’s a revenue imperative which means that digitalisation will naturally become a competitive landscape.
It’s also about an employee proposition. People want to work in a place that’s moving forward, where they’re not going to be spending 80% of their time on the transaction. They want to solve difficult problems or claims for clients. Critically, that’s going to exert pressure on firms, in that talent is going to gravitate towards companies making the biggest strides in digital. We certainly see that happening already.
How will digital facilities like McGill and Partners’ Auton, shape the future client/broker/carrier dynamic?
Ultimately, it’s about matching risk to appetite in a much more algorithmic way. For our clients, it’s two things. One, it enables our brokers to spend more time with them, trying to solve the most complex problems, and then spend more time with the lead to craft solutions. We also see an increasing amount of pure follow being placed algorithmically, so we spend most of our time on lead line broking, and increasingly really complex risk.
The second point for clients, is that we can deliver great rated capacity for them much faster. It’s speed of placement, plus certainty of pricing and coverage for the client.
What are the different methods of measuring the impact that digitalisation delivers?
For us, there is a core measurement around capacity creation. It’s enabling us to grow our revenue and not have to grow our headcount at the same rate as we were at the beginning.
We’re also calculating how people spend that time that is freed up. We are already seeing that they’re spending far more time on the client solution piece. Through our partnership with Google Cloud, we use Agentspace which includes Notebook LM, Deep Research, our own form of ChatGPT, and the ability to create Agents. We’ve got an innovation studio and more than 20 AI-related programmes covering client solutions and operational efficiency.
The challenge for everyone is that, while capacity creation is great, what do people do with the additional time they now have available? You have to make sure that people are focusing on things that add value to clients, and to the firm.
These insights are part of a white paper, developed in collaboration with Artificial, on the future of our industry. To view the full whitepaper, please click here.
In partnership with AEGIS London, a top-quartile Lloyd’s syndicate, we’re pleased to announce a new strategic initiative to transform the way risk is placed, harnessing a digital-first approach. This innovative collaboration will align AEGIS London’s risk appetite across multiple business lines with McGill and Partners’ client portfolio. Using new technology, the platform will algorithmically identify eligible risks, provide quotes and bind cover following a lead’s terms, which will significantly streamline the placement process for clients.
Underwriters will have increased transparency through a bespoke dashboard, which will provide data on risk selection and exposure management to help them manage the portfolio. This ensures underwriting standards are maintained, while making a historically complex process simpler. Automating and combining the quote-and-bind workflow with AEGIS London’s pre-determined underwriting criteria will accelerate placements and improve overall efficiency.
Clients will benefit by receiving faster access to high-quality follow capacity, delivered in line with the lead underwriter’s terms, conditions and pricing. Overall, this provides clients with greater certainty and confidence in the fulfilment of their placement needs.
The initiative is powered by our proprietary Underscore broking platform, and has the potential to scale across additional partners, setting a new standard for digital transformation in the industry.
Steve McGill, CEO at McGill and Partners, said: “We’re excited to launch this digital partnership with AEGIS London. It is built on our shared ambition to deliver smarter, digitally-enabled solutions for the benefit of our clients and drive real change in our industry. At its core, it will deliver what our clients value the most: speed, certainty, and high-quality capacity. By streamlining the placement process, we unlock our brokers’ ability to leverage the wider market more effectively, which will result in a superior client experience.”
Alex Powell, Chief Executive Officer, AEGIS London, said: “This represents a transformative approach in how we use dedicated data analysis to inform and enhance underwriting decisions. By combining advanced analytics with innovative digital trading capabilities, we’re creating a platform that not only simplifies access but deepens collaboration with brokers for the benefit of our clients.
“Underwriting excellence remains at the heart of AEGIS London, and this initiative builds on that through data-driven risk selection. The ability to automatically identify eligible risks and deliver quote-and-bind functionality based on predefined underwriting criteria demonstrates a significant step forward in delivering a truly digital and dynamic trading capability to the market.”
We’re pleased to announce a capacity expansion for Auton, our award-winning, fully digital cross-class auto-follow facility. As it enters its second year, its maximum capacity will increase from 20% to 25%, which will be available for all eligible lines of business, further enhancing its proposition for clients.
The facility continues to be backed by a panel of Lloyd’s insurers, benefiting from Lloyd’s strong financial market ratings and is led by Beazley’s Smart Tracker Syndicate. Auton’s unique design allows underwriters to dynamically flex line sizes, enabling them to tailor their participation to their own underwriting appetite.
This flexibility, combined with access to a broad and diverse portfolio of business spanning multiple classes and geographies, has positioned Auton as a leading facility in the Lloyd’s market. Additionally, with an average indexation rate above 75%, the facility has out-performed industry expectations.
Its digital capabilities and best-in-class dashboards also set it apart. In recent research conducted with its underwriting panel, Auton’s reporting and live dashboards were ranked among the best in the market. The dashboards include comprehensive live data on index performance, premium, claims, aggregate accumulations, and modelled losses, giving underwriters valuable insights to manage and monitor their portfolios.
The capacity increase, which will soon come into force, builds on a successful first year which also saw the launch of Auton Green, which provides up to 40% capacity for onshore renewable energy risks. As Auton enters its second year, the increased capacity will serve to optimise placement for clients and continue the firm’s focus on delivering efficient placement solutions across all client segments.
Mark Gregson, Head of Digital Solutions, McGill and Partners said, “The success of Auton in its first year is a testament to our digital innovation and the strong collaborative partnerships we have with our carriers, which have been key to the facility’s ongoing improvement. The increase in capacity, is a direct response to the appetite of our carriers and clients who are looking for a more efficient, effective and streamlined placement process.”
We’re pleased to announce a new collaboration with Artificial Labs (Artificial), where we will work together to create a single integrated digital platform – so brokers can manage the full placement lifecycle from submission to bind and streamline downstream processing.
By digitising our broking workflow and leveraging key strategic partnerships with Salesforce and Google, this initiative will deliver a fully integrated, end-to-end solution. This will provide our brokers with the digital tools they need, to maximise their focus on client relationships and market engagement and reduce the time spent on administration.
We are the first broker to adopt Artificial’s Smart Placement platform end-to-end. This digital platform ensures that key data, marketing activity, and contract documents are managed in one secure environment, providing valuable client and broking insights, and also supports the next phase of our AI initiatives.
The solution will be fully integrated into our digital ecosystem and will be rolled out globally in a phased approach starting with all UK and Europe specialty areas through the rest of 2025 and into 2026.
Nick Williams-Walker, Chief Operating Officer of McGill and Partners, said: “This is a critical part of our ‘digital-first’ strategy and reinforces our commitment to building market-leading tools. We are creating a best-in-class digital broking environment that empowers our colleagues to focus on what they do best – delivering great outcomes for our clients.”
“Artificial works in tandem with the strategic partnerships we already have with Google and Salesforce to create a fully integrated end-to-end solution that is transforming the way speciality insurance is transacted.”
David King, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Artificial Labs, said: “We are proud to collaborate with a forward-thinking firm like McGill and Partners. Our solution will deliver a fully configurable, broker-first platform that removes operational friction and unlocks the full potential of digital placement. Smart Placement is the only tool of its kind in the market – purpose-built to meet the evolving needs of specialty brokers and designed to integrate seamlessly across the placement lifecycle.”
“By combining advanced technology with deep market understanding, we’re helping McGill and Partners scale their strategy, streamline execution, and deliver exceptional outcomes for their clients. Together, we are creating a more efficient and connected ecosystem.”
