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
$20bn - 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