Many managing general agents (MGAs) compete on underwriting expertise and distribution reach. Their ability to grow also depends on the confidence of carrier and capacity providers. Claims performance directly influences whether a carrier renews a program, expands capacity, improves terms, or walks away. This makes claims execution a strategic priority for any MGA seeking profitable, long-term growth.
Shifting the Paradigm from Premium Volume to Loss Cost Control
Why Claims Execution Deserves Equal Strategic Focus
In workers’ compensation, transportation, and construction, loss costs can account for 60% to 80% of every premium dollar written. Claims execution therefore deserves the same strategic focus as underwriting, pricing, and distribution.
Program performance depends on underwriting, pricing, policy language, and claims working together. Of the four, claims is the one most often treated as an operational function rather than a strategic one. Improving claims outcomes can help an underperforming book, but the response must also address any weaknesses in risk selection, rate adequacy, and policy design.
Good claims execution begins with access to accurate policy information. Integrating policy data with the claims workflow gives adjusters timely access to coverage terms, limits, and endorsements so they can investigate a loss promptly and identify coverage issues early. Complex losses should be assigned promptly to specialists with experience in the relevant line and jurisdiction.
There are specific areas where alignment between the MGA, carrier, and claims partner is critical. Reserving discipline and litigation management are two clear examples: all parties need a shared view of how estimates are set, when they are revisited, how exposure is assessed, and how defense or settlement strategies are managed. When these decisions are documented, budgeted, and reviewed consistently, they support better claim outcomes and help control avoidable loss costs.
Beyond Acquisition: How Controlling Claims Protects Your Capacity
An MGA’s growth depends on continued access to carrier capacity, making confidence in program performance essential. In our annual whitepaper, The Carrier Perspective: 2026 Claims Insights, 64% of North American carriers reported an increase in claims complexity over the past 12 months, driven by social inflation, rising litigation, more severe weather, and more sophisticated fraud.
Our MGA/PA Insights survey shows the same pressure from the other side of the market. Four in ten respondents named underwriting and claims expertise as a major challenge to premium growth. Specialty risk needs specialty claims capability. Without it, complex claims take longer to resolve and cost more to settle, which drives the severity that makes renewal conversations difficult.
Carrier Confidence Is the Constraint on Growth
Building Carrier Confidence Through Disciplined Risk Mitigation
Carriers and reinsurers have become more selective. Carriers now examine program performance well beyond the underwriting file and into the claims operation.
They want predictability: reserve adequacy that holds up over time, consistent handling standards across states and lines of business, clean regulatory compliance, and claims data they can audit. Disciplined claims governance gives a carrier greater confidence that actual loss performance will track expectations.
Regular program reviews with the carrier make that governance visible. The carrier, MGA, and claims partner should examine large losses, reserve development, litigation trends, and deviations from expected performance. Each review should identify corrective actions, assign responsibility, and track progress. This gives the carrier a current view of both the results and the program’s response, well before renewal discussions begin.
What Carrier Confidence Earns, and What Losing It Costs
Carrier confidence determines what happens at renewal. Programs with credible claims results get renewed, get additional capacity, and earn better terms. Programs without them get restricted, repriced, or non-renewed. When results deteriorate, transparent reporting and a credible corrective plan give the carrier a reason to stay. Persistent adverse development with no convincing response is how an MGA loses its paper.
The feedback loop into underwriting is central to this process. If program reviews reveal recurring coverage disputes or rising litigation in a particular class, the MGA can review policy language, pricing, and risk selection and partner with the claims team to adjust its handling strategies. Tracking the effect of those changes helps all three parties assess whether program performance is improving. Better-informed underwriting and claims decisions support carrier confidence and create a stronger foundation for growth.
Building a Claims Operating Model for Long-Term Program Performance
Aligning the MGA, Carrier, and Claims Partner
A strategic claims partner should help identify gaps in the operating model, recommend improvements, and adapt its capabilities as the program develops. Its advice, service model, and incentives should support the outcomes agreed with the MGA and carrier.
The starting point is the program’s risk profile, performance objectives, and growth plans. The MGA, carrier, and claims partner should use these to determine the expertise, data integrations, decision-making responsibilities, and oversight the claims operation needs.
Before launch, or when reviewing an existing program, all three parties should agree how coverage questions, reserving decisions, litigation strategy, and significant losses will be handled and escalated. They should also establish shared measures of ultimate loss outcomes and a regular process for reviewing performance and feeding findings into underwriting.
Operational Metrics That Matter: Balancing SLAs with Financial Outcomes
An SLA can tell an MGA whether initial contact happened within 24 hours. A KPI should tell it whether the handling strategy is effectively managing severity, litigation, and ultimate loss cost. You need both. A program can hit every SLA and still have claims leakage if the decisions made on the file are not improving the financial outcome.
Key indicators of loss-ratio performance include reserve accuracy and development, indemnity leakage, litigation rates and outcomes, allocated loss adjustment expense as a proportion of total expenses incurred, and consistency of handling across desks and jurisdictions.
Gallagher Bassett’s Carrier Practice helps MGAs put this approach into practice. Our quality assurance framework reports claim quality at the desk level, so you and your carrier partners can see how a program is running before aggregate results arrive. Our award-winning RMIS platform, Luminos, turns that claims activity into benchmarking your underwriters can use.
When underwriting, pricing, policy language, and claims execution work together, MGAs are better placed to deliver consistent program performance. That gives carriers a stronger basis for committing the capacity that long-term growth requires. Without it, growth stops regardless of how well the book is underwritten.
Connect with us today to learn how a partnership with Gallagher Bassett can strengthen your claims performance, protect your carrier relationships, and support profitable growth.
