MGA Insurance Software Development: Creating Products For Niche Insurance Markets

Why MGAs Win in the Gaps the Big Insurers Miss

On paper, a Managing General Agent is simple: an intermediary with delegated authority from insurers. In practice, an MGA behaves like a hybrid between a broker and a carrier.

An MGA typically doesn’t carry the risk on its own balance sheet. Instead, it gets authority from one or more insurers or reinsurers to underwrite certain products, bind cover, sometimes handle claims, and manage parts of the portfolio. That delegated authority is the core of the model.

But that’s just the legal structure. What really defines MGAs in the market are three traits:

• Specialist focus – Most MGAs live in a narrow slice of the world. One type of customer, one kind of risk, one product line, often in a few selected territories.
• Lean, expert teams – They’re not giant organizations with complex hierarchies. They’re small groups of people who know their niche better than anyone else, and can make decisions quickly.
• Deep distribution relationships – MGAs usually sit very close to brokers, coverholders, platforms, or embedded partners. They listen, adjust, and co-create products with the distribution side.

This is what sets them apart from traditional players.

They can experiment with pricing and cover, iterate on their distribution model, and refine their niche proposition much faster than a traditional insurer.

The catch?

Your technology has to be able to keep up with that pace. If your systems move like a traditional carrier, your MGA stops being an MGA and starts behaving like a mini-insurer with “big company” problems.

The Software Reality for MGAs: Constraints in a High-Speed Environment

In theory, an MGA can pivot quickly. In reality, many are dragged down by systems that weren’t built for them.

You might recognize some of these pressures:

• You’re trying to launch new products or schemes before competitors do, or before your niche gets crowded.
• Underwriting is not a straight line: there are referrals, exceptions, special approvals, multiple capacity providers, and reinsurance arrangements.
• Carriers and reinsurers need clean, timely bordereaux and performance reports, often in several different formats.
• Claims aren’t just “back-office”—in a niche market, your claims experience is a big part of your value proposition.

Generic policy administration systems, especially older ones, are typically designed around standard products and predictable workflows. And then there’s the classic build vs buy dilemma.

Openkoda: A Different Way to Build MGA Insurance Software

This is where Openkoda comes in.

At a high level, Openkoda is a platform for building and evolving internal and customer-facing insurance applications quickly. Instead of being a rigid, one-size-fits-all policy admin system, it’s an open, extensible foundation that gives you the building blocks you need, plus the freedom to shape them around your business.

A few things matter here, especially for MGAs:

• It uses standard technologies (for example, a Java-based stack) that good engineers already know.
• It’s open in architecture, so you avoid classic vendor lock-in: you can extend it, integrate it, or move in a different direction when you need to.
• It comes with ready-made components—user management, permissions, data models, dashboards, workflows, integrations—so your team isn’t reinventing the wheel every time.

Instead of choosing between a slow, fully custom build and a rigid, off-the-shelf product, Openkoda gives you a third option: build your own MGA Insurance Software on top of a solid, reusable foundation.

For MGAs, the benefits are very concrete:

• You can launch new products or distribution flows in weeks or months, not years.
• You can tailor underwriting, rating, claims, and partner portals to your specific niche instead of bending your processes to fit someone else’s system.
• You keep control over your logic, data, and roadmap. The platform accelerates you, but it doesn’t own you.

In practical terms, here are five key Openkoda features that are especially valuable when you’re building MGA Insurance Software:

• Deep customizability of business rules: You can model and adjust the underlying business rules however you want—underwriting criteria, eligibility checks, pricing logic, referral thresholds, even niche-specific exceptions. Your unique underwriting philosophy is reflected directly in the system, instead of being squeezed into a predefined rules engine.
• Flexible product and rating engine: Define custom products, coverages, endorsements, and rating formulas for your niche lines. As your understanding of the risk evolves, you can iterate on rating, add new parameters, or test new schemes without tearing the system apart.
• Easy integrations with your ecosystem: MGAs usually collaborate with carriers, reinsurers, TPAs, brokers, MGAs, insurtechs, and various data providers because of their delegated authority model. Openkoda is built to plug into that ecosystem: APIs for carriers, bordereaux and reporting pipes, integrations with payment gateways, KYC/AML, telematics, IoT or property data, external underwriting tools, and claims partners.
• Configurable workflows across the value chain: From quote & bind to endorsements and renewals, from FNOL to settlement, workflows are configurable rather than hard-coded. You decide how referrals move, who approves what, and which actions are automated vs. manual.
• Reporting, bordereaux and insights in one place: Generate bordereaux for multiple capacity providers in the formats they require. Build dashboards for loss ratios, conversion, broker performance, or product profitability. Use AI-assisted queries to quickly answer questions like “Which segment is driving our loss ratio up this quarter?”

Conclusion: Owning the Tech That Powers Your Niche

Being an MGA in a niche market is about more than underwriting expertise. It’s about how quickly you can turn insight into product, product into distribution, and distribution into a sustainable portfolio.

Treating technology as a core capability – something you shape and own, rather than just rent—is becoming a strategic choice for MGAs.

Openkoda is one way to do that: a platform that gives you the building blocks for MGA Insurance Software without putting you in a box. You can start small – one product, one workflow, one portal – prove the value, then expand as your niche portfolio grows.