The MGA Boom: Who Is Winning, Who Is Overextended, and the Capacity Question Nobody Wants to Answer
If you work in insurance distribution in any capacity, you have watched the MGA and MGU space go from a niche corner of the market to arguably its most powerful growth engine over the last five years. The numbers are staggering. The growth is real. The talent migration is accelerating. And the capital flowing into this space makes the broker consolidation wave of the 2010s look like a warm-up act.
But here is the thing nobody in the industry press or the consulting reports wants to say out loud: not every MGA riding this wave is built to survive the next cycle. Some are thriving because they are genuinely better at underwriting specific risks than traditional carriers. Others are thriving because a flood of fronting capacity and private equity money has created an environment where almost anyone with a business plan and an underwriting team can get paper. Those are two very different stories, and they are going to have two very different endings.
So let's break this down. Where the MGA market actually stands, who the real winners are, where the cracks are forming, what the capacity dynamics look like going forward, and what all of this means if you are a retail broker, a wholesaler, or an underwriter trying to figure out where to place your bets.
The Numbers Are Staggering, and They Keep Getting Bigger
Let's start with where this market actually is, because even industry veterans tend to underestimate the scale.
In 2024, direct premiums written through MGAs in the United States hit an estimated $114.1 billion, according to Conning's twelfth annual strategic study on the sector. That represents a 16% year-over-year increase, and it outpaced the broader P&C market's growth rate of roughly 10% for the fourth consecutive year. AM Best's separate analysis pegs statutory MGA premium at $89.9 billion for 2024, which represents a 14.5% jump from the prior year and marks the fourth straight year of double-digit expansion.
To put that in perspective, the MGA market has roughly doubled in the span of five years. Back in 2020, we were talking about a market in the $50 billion range. The compound annual growth rate has exceeded 20% since then. That is not a trend. That is a structural shift in how insurance gets distributed and underwritten in this country.
Globally, the picture is equally striking. Insuramore's latest research puts total worldwide MGA, MGU, and coverholder revenues at $29.25 billion in 2024, with approximately 70% to 75% of that revenue coming from direct commercial P&C insurance. They have identified roughly 3,000 MGA-related enterprises worldwide, with more than 2,170 projected to generate over $10 million in premiums in 2025.
The US remains the epicenter. Of the top 500 MGA groups globally by revenue, 267 are based in the United States. And the geographic concentration within the US is notable as well, with southern states accounting for 51% of MGA premium, driven heavily by Florida and Texas, where catastrophe-exposed property business and E&S market growth have been particularly robust.
More than 850 MGAs were identified in US statutory filings in 2024, with another 250 or so estimated to fall below the 5% surplus reporting threshold. The number of very large MGAs is climbing rapidly: 19 produced more than $500 million in direct premiums written in 2024, up from just 12 the year before. Six insurers crossed the $1 billion mark for MGA-produced premium, double the total from 2023.
These are not incremental changes. This is a fundamental restructuring of where underwriting authority lives in the insurance value chain.
The Top of the Food Chain: Who Is Actually Winning
In a market this hot, it is tempting to say everyone is winning. But the reality is far more nuanced. The winners fall into a few distinct categories, and understanding the difference matters enormously for where this market goes next.
The Scale Players
At the top of the MGA food chain, you have the massive consolidated players that have used M&A to build diversified specialty platforms. Brown and Brown's acquisition of Accession Risk Management Group for $9.825 billion in 2025, which brought in Risk Strategies and One80 Intermediaries, was the clearest signal yet of how seriously the largest brokers are taking the MGA and program space. That deal added $1.7 billion in annual revenue and prompted Brown and Brown to create a new Specialty Distribution segment combining its Programs and Wholesale Brokerage operations.
Brown and Brown is now the top-ranked MGA group globally by revenue, having surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue from delegated underwriting activities alone, according to Insuramore's rankings. Right behind them, the top five global MGA groups by revenue are Truist Insurance Holdings, Amwins, Ryan Specialty Group, and Gallagher, collectively controlling just under 20% of the worldwide MGA market.
Ryan Specialty deserves special attention here. They have been on an acquisition tear, completing four deals in 2025 alone: Velocity Risk Underwriters (a $525 million property cat MGA acquisition), USQRisk Holdings (alternative risk transfer), 360 Underwriting Solutions out of Dublin, and JM Wilson Corporation, a century-old MGA and surplus lines broker with $19 million in operating revenue. They followed that up with the acquisition of Stewart Specialty Risk Underwriting in Canada in December 2025. Full-year 2025 revenue hit $3.05 billion, a 21.3% year-over-year increase.
What Ryan is doing is systematic and deliberate. Each acquisition fills a specific gap in their specialty underwriting platform, whether it is property catastrophe capacity via Velocity Risk, international financial lines through 360 Underwriting, or binding authority in the Midwest through JM Wilson. They are not just buying revenue. They are buying underwriting expertise in classes where they already have distribution relationships.
The Catastrophe Property Specialists
In the non-affiliated MGA rankings, AmRisc has taken Conning's top spot for four consecutive years. As a subsidiary of Truist Insurance Holdings, AmRisc is the largest catastrophe-focused property MGA in the United States, writing over $1.5 billion in annual premium. Their success is instructive. They are not trying to be everything to everyone. They are the go-to for cat-exposed commercial property, and they back that specialty with sophisticated modeling, deep carrier relationships, and their own Trouvaille Re sidecar, which renewed in April 2025 with $580 million in underwriting capital from investors and fronting carriers.
AmRisc illustrates the MGA model at its best: deep underwriting expertise in a specific class, capacity relationships that go beyond simple fronting arrangements, and a track record of profitability that keeps carriers coming back.
The Platform Disruptors
On the non-exclusive side, Accelerant has emerged as a significant force. Aon's latest MGA market report identifies Accelerant Underwriting Managers as the largest MGA by their measure, and the company's model represents something genuinely different. Accelerant operates a data-driven risk exchange that connects specialty underwriters with capital providers. They added $585 million in direct premiums written in 2024 and are positioning for an IPO, with an S-1 registration filing published in June 2025.
Accelerant, along with Kestrel Group (founded by former State National executives Terry and Luke Ledbetter, which completed a combination with Maiden Holdings in 2025 to create a publicly listed specialty program platform), represent the emergence of what you might call "MGA infrastructure companies." They are not just underwriting risk. They are building platforms that enable other MGAs to operate, which makes them potentially more durable than any single-class underwriting shop.
The Rising Non-Exclusive Players
On the non-exclusive rankings, Starr Specialty Agency leads with $2.1 billion in direct premiums written in 2024, followed by AGA Service Company at $1.8 billion and Accelerant at $1.4 billion. Private Client Select Insurance Services and RSGUM round out the top five. These companies illustrate the growing preference for multi-carrier relationships, with the industry pivoting toward non-exclusive arrangements that now represent roughly 57% of total MGA business, up from just 33% in 2017.
That shift matters. It means MGAs are increasingly operating as independent underwriting platforms rather than captive extensions of a single carrier. That gives them more flexibility to optimize pricing and coverage for their policyholders, but it also means carriers need to be more sophisticated about how they monitor performance across their delegated authority portfolios.
The Fronting Carrier Explosion
You cannot understand the MGA boom without understanding the fronting market, because fronting carriers have become the essential plumbing that makes the whole system work. And the plumbing has gotten a lot bigger and a lot more complex in a very short period of time.
Fronting companies supported more than $18 billion in MGA premium in 2024, according to Conning, an increase of 26% over the prior year. By Gallagher Re's analysis, fronting carriers generated nearly $28 billion in gross written premiums, up 26% year-over-year. Approximately 20% of total MGA premium is now backed by fronting carriers, a share that has more than tripled since 2020. Lexicon Associates puts the fronting market's compound annual growth rate at 30.9% from 2019 to 2024, making it the fastest-growing insurance sector in the United States, even outpacing the cyber market.
Four fronting companies crossed the $1 billion premium threshold in 2024: Accelerant, Sutton, Transverse, and State National. Transverse was the fastest-growing, adding $1.1 billion in direct and assumed premiums, followed by State National at $870 million. Both Transverse and Sutton achieved triple-digit growth exceeding 100%.
To understand why this matters, you need to understand what a fronting carrier actually does. A fronting carrier is a licensed, admitted insurer that issues a policy and then cedes most or all of the risk to a reinsurer. The fronting carrier provides the regulatory license and the financial rating that allow the policy to be written, while the MGA provides the underwriting expertise and the reinsurer provides the risk capital. The fronting carrier earns a fee for its services, typically a percentage of premium.
This structure has made it possible for MGAs to write admitted and surplus lines business without having to build or acquire their own insurance company licenses. It has lowered the barriers to entry for new MGA startups and expanded the range of capacity available to existing MGAs. But it has also created a chain of delegation that is only as strong as its weakest link.
State National, a subsidiary of Markel, has maintained its position as the largest fronting carrier, with $4 billion in gross written premium. But the competitive landscape is evolving rapidly. Increasingly overlapping appetites among fronting carriers mean that many are targeting similar profiles: large MGAs with experienced underwriting teams, lower volatility classes, casualty opportunities, and E&S programs. This convergence has not prevented growth, because the overall sector is expanding faster than the broader P&C market, but it is creating competitive pressure that could compress margins for fronting carriers and make them more selective about which MGAs they partner with.
The growth of the fronting market has also changed the reinsurance landscape. Lloyd's has taken the top position as the largest reinsurer for fronting companies in Gallagher Re's composite, with $1.1 billion in premium representing 6% of ceded premium and gross recoverables. But the mix of reinsurance backing is shifting in ways that raise questions. TopSail Re climbed to fourth place in 2024 from eighth in 2022, and ICW jumped to ninth from 23rd during the same period. Meanwhile, several major traditional reinsurers have reduced their fronting exposure significantly.
The consolidation dynamic in the fronting market is also worth watching. Large MGA transactions, those involving more than $100 million in capacity, are increasingly driving fronting company growth. And fronting carriers have increasingly turned to the ILS market for collateralized reinsurance support. Property-focused MGAs have been major buyers of such backing. AmRisc's sponsorship of its Trouvaille Re sidecar, which renewed in April 2025 with $580 million in underwriting capital, illustrates how the most sophisticated MGAs are building their own capacity ecosystems that blur the traditional lines between MGA, fronting carrier, and reinsurer.
Conning's fourth annual fronting report captured the maturation challenge well: "The fronting market is transitioning from a race for scale to a race for operational excellence. As MGAs become more discerning and reinsurers demand more rigor, fronting companies must invest in infrastructure, governance, and underwriting discipline to remain competitive." The report also flagged structural challenges including concentration risks, differentiation difficulties, and limited exit options for PE-backed fronting carriers.
For anyone in the MGA ecosystem, the health of the fronting market is directly relevant to your business. If you are an MGA dependent on a single fronting carrier, you have concentration risk that you may not be managing. If you are a retail broker placing business with MGA programs backed by fronting carriers, you need to understand who is providing the paper and how durable those arrangements are. And if you are a carrier considering entering or expanding in the fronting space, you need to be clear-eyed about the governance, technology, and reinsurance capabilities required to compete in what has become a sophisticated and demanding market.
The Talent Migration That Is Reshaping the Industry
You cannot have a conversation about the MGA boom without addressing the talent dynamics, because the single most important input in any underwriting operation is the people doing the underwriting, and those people are moving.
The migration of experienced underwriting talent from traditional carriers and brokerages to MGAs has been one of the most significant workforce shifts in the insurance industry in decades. Conning's latest research consistently identifies this talent drain as one of the primary growth drivers for the MGA sector, and the data supports the claim. Gallagher Re reports that the talent landscape continues to favor MGAs, which "attract underwriting professionals from traditional carriers" through a combination of entrepreneurial autonomy, equity incentives, and the ability to build a focused underwriting shop without the bureaucratic constraints of a large corporate environment.
The Howden model illustrates this dynamic at scale. As we covered in a previous article, Howden's overnight hiring of roughly 200 employees from Brown and Brown, concentrated in employee benefits teams from the legacy Hays Companies operation, followed its earlier 140+ person raid of Marsh. These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a broader industry pattern where aggressive acquirers and MGA builders are using team lift-outs as a growth strategy, effectively transplanting entire underwriting operations from established firms into new platforms.
For the carriers losing talent, this is a strategic crisis that gets insufficient attention in the boardroom. When a senior underwriter leaves a carrier to launch or join an MGA, they are not just taking their expertise. They are taking their relationships with retail and wholesale brokers, their knowledge of the carrier's risk selection and pricing, and often a significant portion of their book of business. The broker-of-record wins that follow these moves can dramatically shift premium flows in a short period.
But here is the part of the talent story that is more nuanced than the "everyone is leaving carriers for MGAs" narrative suggests. The talent pool is not unlimited. There are only so many experienced specialty underwriters in any given class, and the MGA market is increasingly competing with itself for the same people. The underwriter who left Carrier A to launch MGA X three years ago is now being recruited by MGA Y with a better comp package. At some point, the musical chairs of talent redistribution runs into the fundamental constraint that the industry is not producing enough new specialty underwriters to meet demand.
This is where the industry needs to get serious about talent development, not just talent acquisition. The MGAs that build genuine training and mentorship programs for junior underwriters will have a sustainable competitive advantage over the ones that only recruit experienced professionals. The carriers that retain their best underwriters by offering competitive compensation, meaningful autonomy, and a clear career path will stop the bleeding. And the brokerages that invest in developing their own technical underwriting expertise, so they can better evaluate the MGAs they place business with, will position themselves as more valuable partners in the ecosystem.
The talent dynamics also have implications for market quality. When the industry's most experienced underwriters are spread across hundreds of MGAs instead of concentrated at a few dozen carriers, the average quality of underwriting decisions should theoretically improve because those underwriters are closer to the risks they are pricing. But if the governance and oversight structures at those MGAs are not as robust as what existed at the carriers those underwriters left, you could actually end up with worse outcomes despite having better individual talent. The governance gap I discussed earlier is not just an operational issue. It is a talent management issue, because even the best underwriter will make suboptimal decisions if they are operating without adequate authority controls, referral protocols, and portfolio management tools.
The Insurtech MGA Reckoning
It is worth separating the MGA boom into two distinct narratives, because they are often conflated in ways that obscure what is actually happening.
The first narrative is the traditional MGA story: experienced underwriters who spent decades at carriers or wholesalers, identified a niche where they could underwrite more effectively than their former employers, raised capacity, and built a focused program business. This model has been around for generations, and its current growth is largely a function of the hard market creating more opportunities for specialty underwriting and the fronting market making it easier to access paper. These MGAs tend to have deep loss data, long-standing carrier relationships, and proven track records. They are not going away.
The second narrative is the insurtech MGA story, and this one is considerably more complicated. During the venture capital boom of 2020 and 2021, total insurtech investments reached $15.8 billion, and a significant chunk of that capital flowed into companies that were simultaneously technology startups and managing general agents. The pitch was compelling: use AI, data analytics, and digital distribution to underwrite risks more accurately and efficiently than legacy carriers. The reality has been more sobering.
By 2023, insurtech funding was down 50% from the prior year, and valuations had decreased by more than 60%. The decline has continued, with corporate-backed insurtech deals falling by more than a third in 2024, and the value of those deals nearly halving from $2.8 billion to $1.6 billion. CB Insights' Q3 2025 analysis shows that median early-stage insurtech deal size fell 24% year-over-year, reversing much of the growth seen between 2023 and 2024. Only 60% of deals in 2025 went to early-stage startups, the lowest share since 2011.
The failures have been instructive. Metromile, once a champion of pay-per-mile auto insurance, could not achieve sustainable profitability before being acquired. Lemonade, despite enormous initial buzz and a tech-forward approach, has faced ongoing profitability challenges that continue to raise questions about the long-term viability of its model. These are cautionary tales for any MGA that prioritizes growth metrics over underwriting profitability.
The current funding environment tells you where investor sentiment actually sits. As one industry commentator put it, we may be witnessing "the Death of Insurtech 1.0." The startups that survive will be the ones that can prove they have both technological expertise and genuine insurance knowledge. The era of raising a Series A on a pitch deck and a cool app is over. Investors are now demanding sustainability, durability, and a clear path to profitability before they write checks.
That said, there are bright spots. The successful IPO of Accelerant in 2025, raising $700 million, and AXA's $1.1 billion acquisition of Prima Assicurazioni demonstrate that the market will reward insurtech MGAs that actually build profitable, scalable businesses. But the key word is "profitable." The market has zero patience left for growth-at-all-costs stories in insurance.
The Geography Problem
One underappreciated risk in the MGA market is geographic concentration. Southern states account for 51% of all MGA premium in the United States, driven overwhelmingly by Florida and Texas. That concentration reflects the reality that catastrophe-exposed property and E&S business have been the primary growth engines for the MGA sector, but it also means the sector's aggregate performance is heavily influenced by hurricane activity, wildfire exposure, and the regulatory environments of a handful of states.
Florida alone accounts for a disproportionate share of MGA property premium, and the state's litigation environment, assignment of benefits challenges, and regulatory uncertainty create a level of volatility that can whipsaw MGA results from one year to the next. The MGAs that have built diversified books across multiple geographies and multiple lines of business are far better positioned to weather these storms, both literal and figurative, than those that have concentrated in a single geography or class.
Swiss Re's estimate of $107 billion in global insured catastrophe losses in 2025 underscores the stakes. For MGAs focused on property catastrophe, the margin between a profitable year and a devastating one can come down to a single storm track. That is not a reason to avoid the space, but it is a reason to demand that every MGA participant demonstrates robust exposure management, adequate reinsurance protection, and conservative loss picks.
The Super MGA Phenomenon
One of the most interesting structural developments in the MGA market is the emergence of what the industry is calling "super MGAs" or multi-cell structures. These are holding companies designed to house multiple underwriting entities, appointed representatives, or specialist teams under a single governance framework. The appeal is clear: flexibility, scalability, and the ability to support multiple classes of business without fragmenting oversight.
Pro MGA Global Solutions, which reviews between 10 and 15 new MGA business enquiries every month, reports that business plans are increasingly differentiated by distribution strategy, underwriting focus, and geographic reach. The days of launching a single-class MGA and hoping to scale it organically are giving way to more sophisticated structures that plan for multi-territory and multi-class operations from day one.
This evolution reflects the maturation of the MGA model. Early-stage MGAs typically start with a single carrier partner and a focused book of business. As they reach maturity in years three through five, they begin diversifying, setting up reinsurance panels, and adding multiple insurance partners across multiple products. The super MGA structure accelerates this evolution by building the governance, compliance, and operational infrastructure from the outset.
But complexity brings its own risks. Multi-territory and multi-class strategies place significant demands on governance, compliance, and operational resilience. Carriers, regulators, and distribution partners are all asking more detailed questions than they did even a few years ago. The most credible plans are those that acknowledge the realities of regulatory engagement, capital alignment, and long-term capacity relationships, not just the excitement of rapid expansion.
The launch of the Federation of European MGA Associations (FASE) in the fourth quarter of 2025 underlines the growing international ambition of the MGA sector. This is no longer just a US story. Well-established US MGAs are looking to enter the UK market, European platforms are seeking UK authorisation, and groups are structuring themselves to operate seamlessly across multiple regulatory regimes. The global MGA market is converging, and the winners will be those that can navigate cross-border complexity while maintaining underwriting discipline.
The Governance Gap
If there is a single issue that could derail the MGA boom, it is governance. Or more precisely, the gap between the governance standards that carriers and regulators are beginning to demand and the governance capabilities that many MGAs actually have.
Delegated authority is fundamentally a trust model. Carriers trust MGAs to operate within defined underwriting limits, programs, and guidelines. That trust is manageable when volumes are low and teams are small. As MGAs scale, complexity increases across every dimension: more programs, more carriers, more underwriters, more edge cases, and more pressure to bind quickly.
What works at $20 million in premium begins to break at $200 million. Authority limits blur. Exceptions pile up. Referral rules weaken. Carriers lose confidence, not because MGAs are reckless, but because governance fails to scale with volume and complexity.
AM Best's introduction of Performance Assessments for DUAEs is a direct response to this gap. The rating agency recognized that the existing framework for evaluating MGAs was insufficient for a sector producing more than $100 billion in premium. Their assessment framework looks at governance structures, internal controls, data quality, and operational maturity, exactly the areas where many fast-growing MGAs are weakest.
The carriers that are tightening their oversight are not being punitive. They are being rational. When an insurer hands an MGA delegated authority to bind policies on its paper, the insurer's balance sheet is on the hook for every risk that MGA underwrites. If the MGA's governance breaks down, the carrier's loss ratios suffer. Post-Vesttoo, post-AM-Best-outlook-downgrade, the industry is getting much more serious about closing the governance gap.
For MGAs, the message is clear: invest in governance infrastructure now, before you are forced to by a capacity provider or a rating agency. That means real-time authority management systems, automated bordereaux reporting, standardized data formats, and audit-ready decision trails. The MGAs that treat governance as a competitive advantage rather than a compliance burden will be the ones that retain capacity in a more selective market.
Where the Cracks Are Starting to Show
Beyond the governance gap, there are several other warning signs that every participant in the MGA ecosystem needs to understand.
The Vesttoo Hangover
The Vesttoo fraud scandal may have happened in 2023, but its aftershocks are still reverberating through the fronting and MGA ecosystem. Vesttoo, an Israeli insurtech that connected insurance companies with capital market investors, was found to have facilitated nearly $3.36 billion in fraudulent letters of credit. The fallout was severe: Aon set aside $197 million for legal settlements, Clear Blue Insurance faced credit rating reviews, and the broader industry's faith in alternative collateral arrangements was shaken.
Post-Vesttoo collateral reviews have tightened security protocols and increased frictional costs, particularly for fronted programs. Carriers and reinsurers are scrutinizing letters of credit more carefully, and the due diligence requirements for new program launches have increased materially. That is a good thing for market integrity, but it is adding time and cost to the MGA launch process.
More fundamentally, the Vesttoo scandal exposed a structural vulnerability in the fronting model. When you have a chain of delegated authority that runs from an MGA through a fronting carrier to a reinsurer, the integrity of the collateral backing that chain is everything. If any link breaks, the carrier issuing the policy is left holding the bag. The industry has learned that lesson, but the structural vulnerability has not gone away. It has just gotten more expensive to manage.
AM Best Downgrades the Outlook
Perhaps the most significant signal came from AM Best, which revised its outlook for the delegated underwriting authority enterprise segment from positive to stable. That might sound like a minor adjustment, but in the context of a sector that has been growing at double digits for four consecutive years, it is a meaningful statement.
AM Best is citing moderate growth expectations going forward, tighter renewal economics, and increased scrutiny from all market participants. They are watching loss-ratio trends at fronting carriers more closely, questioning collateral quality, and paying attention to the concentration risks that have built up as the sector has scaled.
The rating agency has also introduced Performance Assessments for DUAEs, an industry-first framework for differentiating among MGAs. The fact that AM Best felt the need to create a formal assessment tool tells you something about the level of concern around MGA quality. When the rater starts rating the underwriters who used to fly under the radar, the message is clear: the free pass is over.
The Reinsurance Retreat
Here is a data point that should concern anyone in the MGA space: several major traditional reinsurers significantly reduced their MGA participation in 2024. Munich Re and Swiss Re cut their involvement by over 50%, according to Gallagher Re's analysis. That retreat has accelerated a shift toward lower-rated reinsurers and non-traditional capacity sources like captives, ILS, and collateralized reinsurance.
When the biggest, most sophisticated reinsurers in the world are pulling back from the MGA space, it is worth asking why. Part of the answer is portfolio management and strategic reallocation. But part of it is that these reinsurers have seen enough loss development in certain MGA programs to conclude that the risk-return equation is not always working in their favor.
This shift matters enormously for fronting carriers and the MGAs they support, because the quality of the reinsurance backing a fronted program is ultimately what makes the whole structure work. If the reinsurance panel behind a fronting arrangement starts tilting toward less-rated or alternative capacity, that changes the risk profile of the entire chain.
Casualty Loss Development
Commercial auto insurance illustrates the sector's broader casualty challenge. As of year-end 2024, accident years 2016 through 2020 have loss ratios exceeding 160%, according to Gallagher Re, though more recent years show improvement at around 90%. The North American commercial auto industry has reported combined ratios over 100% for 12 of the last 13 years through 2023, a track record that would be unsustainable in any other context.
Commercial auto is the canary in the coal mine for MGA casualty programs more broadly. Social inflation, litigation funding, and nuclear verdicts are driving loss costs higher across commercial lines, and MGAs that were launched during the hard market with aggressive growth targets may find their loss picks were too optimistic as the market softens.
The Quality Problem
Insurers and fronting companies are seeing record levels of program submissions, but they are adding only a small percentage of new programs. Conning's research notes that carriers are "often citing concerns around program quality, reinsurer reliability, or startup underwriting depth." The message from the capacity side is clear: good ideas need to be supported by clear plans, experienced teams, and demonstrable underwriting discipline.
AM Best's delegated authority outlook document notes that "additional scrutiny of DUAEs by market participants" is increasing, with expectations for timely, high-quality data and continuous monitoring rising. Those increasing fixed operating costs favor scale and governance maturity, which means smaller, less established MGAs face a tougher environment than they did even two years ago.
The Private Equity Question
No discussion of the MGA market is complete without addressing the role of private equity, which has gone from a background investor to a dominant force in shaping the sector's trajectory. Understanding the PE dynamic is essential for everyone in the value chain, because it influences everything from MGA growth strategies to carrier relationships to the competitive landscape for talent.
Private equity's involvement in the insurance sector was once largely centered on traditional life and annuity carriers or distressed P&C assets. That playbook has shifted dramatically. PE firms are now actively pursuing platform-based roll-up strategies, acquiring MGAs to build larger, diversified portfolios with high margins and recurring revenue streams. Deloitte's analysis notes that it is now common to see MGA deals closing at double-digit EBITDA multiples, a premium that reflects the sector's attractive economics.
The appeal is obvious. MGAs do not require heavy capital outlays or large balance sheets. They offer impressive scalability and steady fee-based revenue. They sit in the sweet spot of the insurance value chain: close enough to underwriting to generate high margins, far enough from the balance sheet to avoid regulatory capital requirements. For a PE firm, an MGA platform looks like the ideal insurance asset: asset-light, high-margin, and driven by recurring fee revenue.
The numbers support the thesis. Insurance brokerage deals have been the bread and butter of PE insurance investing for the past decade, but those valuations have largely plateaued as consolidation has matured and the biggest players have achieved significant scale. In contrast, the appeal of MGAs has only grown stronger. Unaffiliated MGAs, those not majority-owned by a single carrier, now represent 46.6% of total MGA premium, and their share is growing. These are the assets PE firms are competing for.
But there are legitimate questions about whether the PE ownership model always aligns with the long-term sustainability of MGA operations. PE firms typically operate on fund timelines that create pressure for exit events within seven to ten years. That pressure can drive aggressive growth strategies that prioritize premium volume over underwriting discipline. When the market is hard and capacity is flowing, that works. When the market softens and carriers start scrutinizing loss ratios, the MGAs that grew fastest may be the ones with the most adverse development.
The exit dynamic is particularly concerning right now. As Risk Strategies' private equity outlook notes, PE firms "suffer from a lack of quality assets available in the market, interest rate uncertainty, lofty seller expectations for price, and LPs who want distributions, not capital calls." The PE-to-PE market, which historically drove a lot of middle-market M&A activity, has ground to a halt. LPs want distributions, but they want them at or above the valuations that the funds are carrying them at on their financials.
What does this mean in practice? It means some PE-backed MGAs that were expected to flip to another financial buyer may find themselves stuck without a clear exit path. It means the pressure to grow, to demonstrate the revenue trajectory that justifies the next valuation step, will intensify. And it means that carriers and fronting companies need to be especially vigilant about the growth strategies of their PE-backed MGA partners, because the incentives of a PE fund manager preparing for an exit are not always aligned with the long-term underwriting discipline that produces sustainable results.
That said, PE involvement has also brought genuine benefits to the MGA sector. PE-backed platforms often have access to professional management expertise, technology investment capital, and operational improvement playbooks that can accelerate an MGA's development. The professionalization of MGA operations that PE ownership has driven, including better financial reporting, more rigorous data analytics, and stronger governance frameworks, has been good for the sector overall.
The key distinction is between PE firms that understand insurance and those that do not. The firms that have built dedicated insurance investing teams, that understand the importance of combined ratios and loss development, and that view their MGA platforms as long-term franchise businesses will produce good outcomes for all stakeholders. The firms that are applying generic financial engineering to an industry they do not deeply understand will eventually learn expensive lessons.
Among insurer-owned entities, Munich Re generates the highest revenues from proprietary MGA operations, according to Insuramore. And there is a notable trend toward spinning off or acquiring independent MGAs, as both carriers and investors recognize the flexibility these unaffiliated entities bring. Currently, affiliated MGAs make up about 45% of the market by premium volume, but the non-affiliated segment, now at 46.6%, is growing faster, supported by strong relationships with fronting carriers.
The Technology Factor
One of the most often-cited advantages of the MGA model is technological agility, and the data supports this claim, at least to a point.
Conning's 2025 survey found that only 25% of MGAs expressed concern about technology underinvestment, down from 34% five years ago. The sector has benefited from migration of experienced talent from traditional insurers, rapid scaling of platform-based MGAs accelerating program launches, and expanding adoption of AI and automation across operations.
But the technology story in the MGA space is more nuanced than the hype suggests. As the insurance edge's 2026 outlook notes, "rather than positioning technology as the product itself, most MGAs are deploying tools, including AI, to enhance efficiency, underwriting support, and operational scalability." In practice, that means automated document ingestion, faster policy issuance, more intelligent triage of submissions, and streamlined bordereaux and reporting processes. Only a small minority of MGA propositions are focused on insuring technology risks themselves.
What is particularly notable is that carriers are increasingly viewing MGAs as a live testing environment for technology and AI use cases. MGAs can deploy and iterate on new tools faster than large balance sheet organizations, which makes them valuable innovation partners for carriers looking to modernize without bearing the full implementation risk.
The real technology differentiator for MGAs heading into 2026 is not AI or any single tool. It is the ability to demonstrate data transparency and underwriting discipline to capacity providers in real time. Guidewire's analysis puts it well: "MGAs that unify digital intake, appetite clarity, instant triage, and straight-through processing are proving they can scale producer loyalty and conversion without massive field forces." The winners will be the MGAs that can prove their underwriting quality through data, not just promise it through pitch decks.
What This Means for Retail Brokers
If you are a retail broker, the MGA explosion is simultaneously your greatest opportunity and your most underappreciated competitive threat.
The opportunity is straightforward. MGAs have created access to capacity and coverage forms that simply did not exist a decade ago. Whether you are placing a cannabis operation, a coastal commercial property account, a complex cyber risk, or a trucking fleet with an adverse loss history, there is probably an MGA that specializes in exactly that risk. The proliferation of MGAs has given retail brokers more tools in the toolbox than ever before.
But here is the threat side: as MGAs become more sophisticated in their distribution, some are increasingly going direct to the insured or building their own agent networks that compete with traditional retail brokers. The non-exclusive MGA model, which now represents 57% of the market, means these MGAs are building their own brand identities and agent relationships that may not always flow through you.
The practical implication for retail brokers is that you need to understand the MGA landscape in your specialty areas better than you ever have. Which MGAs have the best loss ratios in your key classes? Which fronting carriers are backing them? How stable is that capacity? A retail broker who can articulate why a specific MGA program offers better coverage and more sustainable pricing than the alternatives is adding genuine value. A retail broker who is just forwarding submissions to whoever responds fastest is going to get disintermediated.
The smartest retail brokers are building deeper strategic relationships with a select number of high-quality MGAs rather than spreading business across dozens of programs. That concentration gives them better insights into underwriting appetite, faster turnaround on complex risks, and more leverage when it comes to negotiating terms for their clients.
There is also a defensive play here that most retail brokers are not thinking about. As the MGA market matures and some programs inevitably lose capacity or shut down, the retail broker who placed their client's business with that program is the one who has to find replacement coverage. If you have been placing business with an MGA solely because they offered the cheapest rate without understanding the durability of their capacity arrangements, you are setting yourself up for a very uncomfortable conversation with your client when that program does not renew.
The lesson from the past few cycles is clear: price is not everything. Program stability, claims handling quality, and the financial strength of the capacity behind the MGA all matter enormously, and they matter most when the market turns. Retail brokers who can explain this to their clients, and who have done the due diligence to understand which MGA programs are built on solid foundations, will differentiate themselves from the ones who are just chasing the cheapest quote.
I would also urge retail brokers to pay attention to the emergence of embedded insurance and direct-to-consumer MGA models. Non-insurance businesses are increasingly looking to become MGAs themselves, integrating insurance coverage directly into their product and service offerings. Automotive manufacturers, fintech companies, real estate platforms, and e-commerce businesses are all exploring the MGA model as a way to capture insurance revenue. If your book of business is concentrated in classes where embedded distribution could displace the traditional broker channel, now is the time to think about how you add value beyond transaction processing.
What This Means for Wholesale Brokers
For wholesale brokers, the MGA boom is reshaping the competitive landscape in fundamental ways that demand a strategic response.
The traditional wholesale model, where a retail broker sends you a risk and you shop it across multiple E&S carriers, is being compressed by MGAs that offer binding authority and instant quotes in classes that used to require multiple submissions and weeks of back-and-forth. An MGA with delegated authority in a specific class can often bind a risk in hours that would take a traditional wholesale process days or weeks.
That speed advantage is real, and it is why wholesale brokers need to be thinking about their MGA strategy proactively. Many of the largest wholesale organizations have already moved aggressively into the MGA space. Brown and Brown's creation of a new Specialty Distribution segment combining Programs and Wholesale Brokerage is the template. Ryan Specialty's acquisition strategy is explicitly building out binding authority capabilities through deals like JM Wilson. Amwins, CRC Group, and the other major wholesalers are all investing in program business and MGA platforms.
For mid-sized and smaller wholesale brokers, the question is existential: can you compete on speed and specialization with MGAs that have delegated authority, purpose-built technology, and dedicated carrier relationships? If the answer is no, you need to either build or partner your way into the MGA space, or you need to double down on the complex, brokered risks where your market access and negotiation expertise still add irreplaceable value.
The E&S market continues to grow robustly, which provides a tailwind for wholesalers of all sizes. But within that growth, the share of business flowing through MGAs versus traditional brokered placements is shifting, and it is shifting in the direction of delegated authority.
Let me be specific about where I think the wholesale brokerage model still holds an advantage, and where it does not. For standard E&S classes where the risk profile is relatively predictable, say a habitational property account or a small contractors GL risk, the MGA model is already faster, cheaper, and more efficient than the brokered placement. The wholesaler who is still manually shopping these risks across five or six markets is wasting everyone's time, including their own.
But for genuinely complex risks, the kind that require bespoke manuscript wording, layered towers of capacity, and real negotiation between underwriter and broker, the wholesale model remains essential. Think large construction projects, complex environmental risks, multinational casualty programs, or bespoke professional liability placements. These risks require the kind of market knowledge, relationship capital, and technical expertise that cannot be automated or delegated.
The strategic question for every wholesale broker is whether their book of business is concentrated in the classes where MGA efficiency wins, or in the classes where brokerage expertise still commands a premium. If it is the former, the clock is ticking. If it is the latter, you still need to invest in technology and speed, but your core value proposition is defensible.
I would also note that the consolidation among the largest wholesale and MGA platforms is creating a new dynamic for mid-market wholesalers. When Brown and Brown combines its Programs and Wholesale Brokerage into a Specialty Distribution segment, or when Ryan Specialty builds binding authority capabilities alongside its brokerage operations, they are creating integrated platforms that can serve retail brokers as a one-stop shop for both traditional brokerage and delegated authority placement. If you are a mid-sized wholesaler without an MGA capability, you are increasingly being squeezed between the integrated platforms above you and the specialized MGAs below you.
What This Means for Underwriters
If you are an underwriter at a traditional carrier, the MGA market presents both an opportunity and a strategic challenge that requires a more thoughtful response than most carriers have deployed to date.
The opportunity is that MGAs offer carriers a way to access specialized markets and develop tailored solutions without building and managing dedicated underwriting operations internally. The "outsourced underwriting" model lets carriers deploy capital into classes and geographies that they could not efficiently serve with their own staff. Conning's research notes that MGAs offer "flexibility and access to niche markets to insurers without the need to build and manage dedicated underwriting operations internally."
But the strategic challenge is real, and it goes beyond the commonly discussed talent drain. Yes, the migration of underwriting talent from carriers to MGAs continues to accelerate, and that is a problem. When your best underwriters leave to launch or join MGAs, they take their relationships, their expertise, and often their books of business with them.
The deeper challenge is that many carriers are not equipped to manage the complexity of a large MGA portfolio. The days of handing out binding authority and checking in at the annual program review are over. AM Best, Conning, and Gallagher Re are all highlighting the need for real-time performance monitoring, standardized bordereaux, and proactive portfolio management across MGA relationships.
Consider the data: insurers recorded $91.8 billion of 2024 direct premiums written produced by MGAs in statutory filings. Six insurers crossed the $1 billion mark for MGA-produced premium. At that scale, the MGA portfolio is not a side business. It is a core underwriting operation that happens to be managed by external parties. The carriers that treat it as such, with dedicated teams, real-time dashboards, and proactive intervention capabilities, will get better results than the ones that treat MGA oversight as a compliance function.
The carriers that are winning in the current environment are the ones that view MGA partnerships as strategic relationships rather than transactional arrangements. That means investing in technology that allows real-time data sharing, building internal teams dedicated to MGA oversight, and being willing to walk away from programs that are not delivering acceptable results. The carriers that treat every MGA program as interchangeable capacity are the ones most likely to end up with adverse development.
There is also a question of strategic positioning that every carrier needs to answer: are you a platform for MGA capacity, or are you competing against MGAs for the same business? The fronting carrier model has blurred this line, and some carriers are finding themselves in the awkward position of providing paper to MGAs that are simultaneously recruiting their underwriting talent and competing for their policyholders. That tension is only going to increase as the MGA market matures.
The smartest carrier strategy, in my view, is to be selective and disciplined about MGA partnerships, focusing on classes and geographies where the MGA model genuinely adds underwriting value that the carrier cannot replicate internally. That means saying no to a lot of submissions. Conning's research notes that insurers are "adding only a small percentage of new programs" from the record levels of submissions they are receiving. That selectivity is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of discipline, and it is exactly what the market needs right now.
For underwriters personally, the career calculus has never been more interesting. The MGA model offers entrepreneurial autonomy, equity participation, and the chance to build something. The carrier model offers stability, brand recognition, and access to larger balance sheets. Both paths can be rewarding, but the decision should be made with clear eyes about the risks. Not every MGA that recruits you with a compelling pitch about independence and upside will be around in five years. The capacity relationships, reinsurance structures, and governance capabilities of the MGA you join matter just as much as the compensation package.
The Sustainability Question Nobody Wants to Answer
Here is the question that keeps me up at night when I look at this market: is the current rate of MGA growth sustainable, or are we building toward a correction?
The bull case is straightforward. MGAs are structurally better positioned than traditional carriers to serve specialized and emerging risks. Technology is making them more efficient. The talent migration is self-reinforcing as more experienced underwriters choose the MGA model. Capacity providers, despite increased selectivity, continue to view MGAs as attractive deployment vehicles. The E&S market continues to grow, and MGAs are disproportionately represented in E&S lines. The broader P&C industry is seeing improved profitability, with the statutory combined ratio improving materially to roughly 96.6% in 2024, which supports program growth while keeping underwriting discipline in focus.
The bear case is more nuanced but equally compelling. AM Best has already downgraded the sector outlook from positive to stable. Major reinsurers like Munich Re and Swiss Re are pulling back from MGA participation. The fronting market, while still growing, is showing signs of stratification and concentration risk. Casualty loss development is adverse in key classes. The PE capital that has fueled much of the sector's growth may face exit challenges. And the softening market environment in many specialty classes means the pricing tailwinds that supported MGA profitability during the hard market are fading.
There is also the basic math problem that everyone in this market is conveniently ignoring. The P&C insurance industry in the United States generates roughly $900 billion to $1 trillion in direct premiums written annually. MGA-produced premium is now over $114 billion, or about 10% of total market volume. The MGA sector has been growing at 15-20% annually while the broader market grows at 10%. At some point, the MGA growth rate has to converge with the overall market growth rate, because you cannot indefinitely take share from the rest of the industry without running into the limits of available capacity, regulatory scrutiny, and carrier appetite.
My view is that we are entering a period of maturation rather than contraction, but that maturation will look and feel like a correction for the MGAs that were built on the assumption that the hard market would last forever.
The Conning study's framing is apt: "growth alone will not be enough" in 2026. The fronting market is transitioning from a race for scale to a race for operational excellence. Capacity remains available, but selectivity is intensifying. Carrier partners are increasingly focused on underwriting consistency, loss ratio stability, and portfolio discipline. The MGAs that can demonstrate sustained performance will be positioned to secure and retain capacity. The ones that cannot will find the market increasingly inhospitable.
There is a historical parallel worth considering. The last time delegated authority grew this rapidly in the US market, it was the late 1990s and early 2000s. That cycle ended with the collapse of several fronting carriers, most notably Legion Insurance, whose rehabilitation and liquidation in 2002 and 2003 resulted from inadequate reinsurance recoverables, questionable underwriting expertise, and contract wording issues. The current market is far more sophisticated than it was 20 years ago, and the regulatory and oversight infrastructure is stronger. But the fundamental dynamics that drive cycles have not changed: abundant capacity leads to growth, growth leads to competition, competition leads to loosening of standards, and loosening of standards leads to losses. The question is always how far along that cycle we are.
I do not think we are at the crisis point. But I think we are past the easy money phase, and the next two to three years will separate the MGAs that are built on genuine underwriting excellence from the ones that were built on favorable market conditions and abundant capital.
The Embedded Insurance Frontier
Before I get to the broader outlook, it is worth spending a moment on embedded insurance, because this is the next frontier for MGA distribution and it has implications for everyone in the value chain.
The concept is straightforward: non-insurance businesses integrate insurance coverage directly into their products, services, and customer journeys. The automotive manufacturer that offers insurance at the point of vehicle purchase. The e-commerce platform that adds shipping protection at checkout. The bank that bundles homeowners coverage with its mortgage product. In each case, the insurance is "embedded" in a non-insurance transaction, and the distribution costs are dramatically lower than traditional broker-intermediated channels.
The MGA model is perfectly suited to enable embedded insurance, because MGAs can provide the underwriting expertise, product design, and carrier relationships that non-insurance brands need without requiring those brands to build their own insurance infrastructure. This is why we are seeing more non-insurance businesses exploring the MGA model, either by partnering with existing MGAs or by creating their own.
For retail brokers, this trend represents a long-term competitive threat in personal lines and small commercial, where embedded distribution could eventually displace the traditional shopping-for-insurance model. For wholesalers, it is less of a direct threat but more of a growth opportunity if they can position themselves as the capacity connectors for embedded programs. For carriers and underwriters, it represents a new distribution channel that could drive significant premium volume but requires different risk management and monitoring capabilities than traditional MGA relationships.
The embedded insurance market is still relatively small compared to traditional distribution, but the growth trajectory is steep, and the economics are compelling for everyone involved: the non-insurance brand gets incremental revenue and customer engagement, the MGA gets distribution at a fraction of traditional acquisition costs, and the carrier gets premium that it could not have accessed through traditional channels.
Where This Market Goes from Here
Looking ahead, I see several dynamics that will define the MGA market over the next two to three years.
First, consolidation among MGAs will accelerate. The top players will continue acquiring smaller MGAs to build diversified platforms, and PE-backed MGAs will increasingly need to sell to strategic buyers as fund timelines mature. The combined market share of the top five groups is still less than 20%, which tells you there is enormous runway for further consolidation. Expect to see more transactions like Brown and Brown's $9.8 billion acquisition of Accession, as the largest players use their scale and public market access to absorb smaller platforms.
Second, the fronting market will stratify. The strongest fronting carriers, those with diversified books, strong reinsurance panels, and operational maturity, will pull further ahead. The weaker players, those that grew too fast or have concentrated risk profiles, will face increasing pressure from rating agencies and reinsurers. We may see some fronting carrier exits or combinations. The four carriers that crossed $1 billion in MGA premium in 2024 (Accelerant, Sutton, Transverse, and State National) are establishing the scale and sophistication that will be the baseline for survival. Smaller fronting carriers that cannot match their governance, technology, and reinsurance capabilities will increasingly struggle to compete.
Third, regulatory scrutiny of MGAs will increase. AM Best's Performance Assessment framework is just the beginning. State regulators are paying closer attention to MGA activity, especially in states that have experienced significant carrier pullback due to environmental disasters. The MGA market's rapid growth has outpaced regulatory oversight in many jurisdictions, and that gap is going to close. We are already seeing early signals of this, with FSRA in Ontario releasing a proposed regulatory framework for life and health insurance MGAs, and Lloyd's continuing to tighten its oversight of delegated authority relationships.
Fourth, technology will increasingly determine which MGAs survive the maturation cycle. Not because AI is going to replace underwriters, but because the MGAs that can demonstrate data transparency, underwriting discipline, and operational efficiency through technology will be the ones that retain capacity in a more selective environment. The practical applications that matter are not the headline-grabbing AI demos but the mundane-sounding capabilities that carriers actually care about: automated bordereaux submission, real-time authority management, digital submission intake, and straight-through processing for standard risks. The MGAs that invest in these capabilities will process more business with less friction and at lower error rates, which translates directly into better carrier relationships and more stable capacity.
Fifth, the talent war will intensify. MGAs will continue to recruit experienced underwriters from traditional carriers, but the competition for that talent will also increase as more MGAs enter the market and as the existing players scale. The MGAs that can offer a compelling combination of entrepreneurial autonomy, competitive compensation, and operational support will win the talent race. But there is a limit to the available talent pool, and the industry needs to think about how it develops the next generation of specialty underwriters, not just how it redistributes the existing ones between carriers and MGAs.
Sixth, the shift toward non-exclusive MGA relationships will continue and accelerate. AM Best has noted that non-exclusive arrangements grew to roughly 57% of total MGA business in 2024, up from 33% in 2017. This trend gives carriers greater flexibility to manage their portfolios, allows MGAs to diversify their capacity sources, and creates more options for policyholders. But it also means that MGAs can lose carrier support more easily if performance falters, and carriers need more sophisticated tools to monitor their exposure across multiple non-exclusive relationships.
Seventh, international expansion will be a defining feature of the next phase. The formation of FASE, the growing number of US MGAs entering the UK market, and the increasing sophistication of cross-border MGA structures all point to a sector that is outgrowing its domestic roots. The MGAs that can navigate multiple regulatory regimes while maintaining underwriting discipline will have a significant competitive advantage over those that remain single-market operators.
The Takeaway
The MGA market is not in a bubble, but it is in a phase transition. The explosive growth of the last five years has been real and structurally driven, but the next phase will reward discipline over speed, operational maturity over growth at any cost, and genuine underwriting expertise over financial engineering.
This is a market that has gone from $50 billion to $114 billion in five years. It represents roughly 10% of all US P&C premium and is growing faster than the rest of the industry. The fronting market that supports it has gone from a niche specialty to a nearly $28 billion segment generating 20%+ growth in 21 of the last 24 quarters. The talent pipeline from traditional carriers to MGAs shows no signs of slowing. The structural advantages of the MGA model, specialization, speed, technology, and entrepreneurial alignment, are real and durable.
But the warning signs are equally real. AM Best's outlook downgrade from positive to stable. Major reinsurer pullbacks. Adverse casualty development. The Vesttoo hangover tightening collateral standards. PE exit pressure building. A softening market eroding the pricing tailwinds. And a governance gap that has not yet caught up to the sector's growth.
For retail brokers, the imperative is to deepen your understanding of the MGA landscape and build strategic relationships with the highest-quality programs. Do the due diligence on capacity stability. Understand the fronting and reinsurance arrangements behind the programs you use. Be prepared to explain to your clients why the cheapest MGA quote is not always the best placement.
For wholesale brokers, the message is to lean into delegated authority and program business before it renders traditional brokered placement obsolete in your key classes. If you do not have an MGA capability today, you need a plan to get one. If you do have one, you need to invest in the technology and governance infrastructure that will keep your capacity partners comfortable.
For underwriters at carriers, the priority is to build sophisticated oversight capabilities for your MGA portfolios and be prepared to walk away from programs that are not delivering. The selectivity that the best carriers are already exercising needs to become the industry standard. And if you are an underwriter considering the leap to the MGA side, make sure you understand the full picture of the platform you are joining, not just the compensation package.
And for the MGAs themselves? The market is telling you something: the era of easy growth funded by abundant fronting capacity and PE capital is evolving into an era where sustainable profitability, transparent data, and genuine underwriting discipline are the price of admission. The MGAs that hear that message and adapt will be the ones that thrive in the next decade. The ones that do not will become cautionary tales in the next cycle's consulting reports.
The numbers say this market is bigger and more important than it has ever been. The question is whether every participant in it has earned their seat at the table, or whether some of them are about to find out they were only invited because the room was expanding.
Fabio Faschi is an Insurance leader, National Producer, Board Member of the Young Risk Professionals New York City chapter and Committee Chair at RISE with over a decade of experience in the insurance industry. He has built and scaled over a dozen national brokerages and SaaS-driven insurance platforms. Fabio's expertise has been featured in publications like Forbes, Consumer Affairs, Realtor.com, Apartment Therapy, SFGATE, Bankrate, and Lifehacker.
