Insurance Times’ Five Star Rating Report: MGA market 2022 and online ratings are now available

The findings of 2022’s Five Star Rating Report: MGA market – including online rating tables – are now fully available, exclusively from Insurance Times.

This year, 43 MGAs met the annual report’s threshold to receive a star rating from their UK-based broker partners, with seven MGAs gaining a coveted five star score.

The report, now in its third year, aims to investigate brokers’ opinions, attitudes and satisfaction with the services they receive from their MGA partners. The star ratings awarded by the report are, therefore, directly related to MGAs’ performance, providing a practical benchmarking tool for both brokers and MGAs.

For 2022, more than 1,300 UK brokers participated in the survey between June and August 2022 - this informed the final report. Brokers were asked to identify and rate the MGAs with which they have regularly placed business during the past 12 months.

Top line results

The MGAs that attained the maximum five star accolade from brokers this year are MPR Underwriting, Renovation Underwriting, KGM Underwriting, Lorega, First Underwriting, Prestige Underwriting and Nexus Underwriting.

Out of the other remaining 36 MGAs, brokers awarded 19 MGAs with an overall four star rating, 11 MGAs received a three star score and six MGAs were awarded two stars by their broker partners.

The sheer volume of feedback Insurance Times received from brokers means that only a snapshot of the insights from the survey are included online and in the report. As a result, Insurance Times is once again publishing its MGA 2022/23 Data Insight Book. This provides a more detailed analysis of the 43 MGAs rated by brokers.

For more information about 2022’s data insight book, or data books from previous years, contact Aisha Roberts at aisha.roberts@insurancetimes.co.uk

Insurance Times’ head of research, Savan Shah, said: “MGAs play a pivotal part in the insurance market and have been even more integral over the last 12 months of business activity.

“Their services, products and support have been so essential to brokers over the last year - maybe more so than ever before.”

Shah added that the report will help brokers justify their selection of MGAs to clients, allow MGAs to benchmark themselves on service and support MGAs to improve their overall proposition.

“Thank you to all the brokers across the nation that came forward to participate in the survey - your views and feedback will surely steer the MGA market through challenging times over the next year,” he continued.

Service focus

An increasing number of brokers are choosing to work with MGAs due to the service they receive from these firms. This is evident when looking at the overall combined service delivery scores across all 43 MGAs that met the threshold to be included in Insurance Times’ report this year.

Last year, MGAs that featured in the Five Star Rating Report achieved an overall market average of 4.29 out of five in terms of service. This year, the MGA community scored in the report achieved an improved market average of 4.37 out of five.

The overall average achieved by MGAs for their service this year is far higher than the overall average achieved by commercial insurers in the Five Star Rating Report: Commercial lines 2022, which was published in March 2022.

In this publication, 13 commercial lines insurers achieved a market average of 3.59 out of five for this metric.

Although the insurers featured in this specific report are assessed against five service areas, while the MGAs were assessed against one overall service criteria, the data suggests that the MGA market is growing to fill a service gap left by insurers.