Age of the MGA Podcast

On this episode of Age of the MGA, Doug goes to war with organized crime. Peter poaches his employees. And both of them sit Dylan down for an intervention. Somewhere in between, we find out how an Irish MGA actually makes money insuring taxis and livery vehicles. That Irish MGA is TaxiFair. Luke Calvert and Gareth Logan built TaxiFair around one specialty: taxi and rideshare insurance. They entere...

AI is moving from helping people do their jobs to performing more of the work itself. That creates a new question for insurance: when AI takes an action, makes an error, or produces an outcome that causes harm, who owns the risk? Jeremy Epstein, Founder & CEO of Mayflower Specialty, joins the Age of the MGA to unpack how his team is approaching that problem. The conversation goes well beyond w...

How fast can an MGA grow before the business starts outrunning the systems underneath it? In this episode of Age of the MGA, Nyles Oppenheimer, Chief Revenue Officer at Cover Whale, joins Doug Ver Mulm, Dylan Brand, and Peter Tilbrook for a practical conversation about what it actually takes to scale an MGA without sacrificing the discipline that makes the model work. Nyles talks openly about Cove...

Patti Harman is Head of Content at ITC Vegas (InsureTech Connect), where she helps shape the topics, speakers, and conversations brought to the insurance industry. In this episode of Age of the MGA, Patti joins Doug Ver Mulm, Dylan Brand, and Peter Tilbrook to look at something MGA founders can easily underestimate: what can happen when the right people in insurance actually get in the same room....

A good insurance product does not automatically become a good business. That is one of the hardest lessons in the MGA world, especially when you are building in a new category, with a new buyer, a new problem, and a market that still needs to be educated. In this episode of The Age of the MGA Podcast, we sit down with TJ Olonilua from Accelerant for a practical conversation about distribution, pla...

Sam Reeder, CEO of Hadron Insurance, joins Age of the MGA live from Scout InsurTech Conference to talk about how modern program business is being built from the carrier side. This conversation surfaces a major operating shift: delegated authority is becoming more actively managed, more data-visible, and more tied to carrier balance sheet discipline than many MGA founders realize. This is not a gen...

Matthew Queen joins the Age of the MGA crew for one of the deepest operator conversations we’ve had on captives, alternative risk, claims accountability, and why MGA formation is often much closer to captive insurance than most people realize. Matthew breaks down how captives actually work operationally, why they change organizational behavior, and how claims visibility creates better operators. T...

ESG has become one of the most loaded terms in business. Some hear it and think politics. Some hear it and think corporate window dressing. James Pallett hears something else entirely: A better way to underwrite risk. In this episode of Age of the MGA, James Pallett, Co-Founder of Verde Underwriting, joins Doug, Dylan, and Peter to unpack how Verde is building a specialty financial lines MGA aroun...

Sam Knee-Robinson experience spans across connecting insurance businesses, syndicates, MGAs, and emerging risk platforms with the capital and capacity they need to grow. In this conversation, he explains what actually happens behind the scenes when MGAs try to secure capacity, raise capital, and move from an idea into a real operating business. This episode is a serious conversation about one of t...

Joe Zuk is one of the most respected operators and investors in the MGA ecosystem.  As Operating Partner at Altamont Capital Partners, he sits at the intersection of capital, execution, talent, and platform building across insurance and insurance services.  In this conversation, he shares what actually separates durable MGAs from businesses that only looked good when the market was doing the work...

Andrew Bate joins Age of the MGA for a conversation about claims, specialization, and what it actually takes to build insurance around real business needs. This is a practical discussion about customer pain, niche program design, distribution constraints, and why MGAs can often build solutions that generalist brokers cannot. It is also a conversation shaped by Andrew’s experience at Safely and his...

William Pitt returns to Age of the MGA for a second conversation focused on the European MGA market and what it actually takes to build across it. This is a practical discussion about fragmentation, distribution, capacity, and why scale in Europe does not work the same way it does in the U.S. It is also a conversation about FAST, network effects, and the longer-term goal of a more integrated Europ...

* Thank you to our sponsor:  Register for the Scout Insurtech Conference at https://www.scoutinsurtech.com/conference and Save 10% with our coupon code "Age of the MGA 2026" Chris Luiz is the CEO of Scout, an insurance ecosystem platform built to connect carriers, brokers, investors, and early-stage companies in a more intentional way. In this episode, the conversation centers on what ma...

Most MGA launches take longer than they should. In this episode of The Age of the MGA Podcast, we sit down with Chris McKechnie and Dani Lefland from Vivere, a new E&S MGA building around an underwriting-first, tech-enabled model.  We kicked off the conversation with Vivere’s partnership announcement with Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance and quickly turns into a deeper operator discussio...

* Thank you to our sponsor:  Register for the Scout Insurtech Conference at https://www.scoutinsurtech.com/conference and Save 10% with our coupon code "Age of the MGA 2026" In this episode of Age of the MGA, we sit down with Greg Hoffnagle, Partner at Holland & Knight LLP. Greg has spent two decades inside insurance law — working across regulatory, corporate, private equity, and ins...

In this episode of Age of the MGA, we sit down with Tomer Kashi, Co-Founder and CEO of SkyWatch and VOOM. Tomer shares how they built a specialty mobility MGA from scratch — starting in commercial drones and expanding into light aircraft and pay-per-mile motorcycle coverage. This is a builder’s conversation about focus, sequencing, and execution. What This Episode Covers ✅ Why they pivoted from s...

In this episode of Age of the MGA, we sit down with Patrick Girouard, Founder and CEO of District Cover. District Cover is focused exclusively on bringing stable insurance capacity back to America’s major cities — particularly neighborhoods that traditional markets have stepped away from. This conversation explores what it actually takes to underwrite markets others consider uninsurable. What You&...

If You’re Building an MGA, This Episode Might Save You 12–24 Months of Pain In this episode of The Age of the MGA Podcast, we sit down with Alex Bond, Founder of FinPro, one of the most trusted search partners in the global InsurTech and MGA ecosystem. Most MGAs don’t fail because of product, capital, or ambition. They fail because of early hiring mistakes. Wrong sequencing. Mispriced roles. Big-b...

In this episode of Age of the MGA, the hosts turn the tables and interview Rob Jacomen. Rob has spent years advising MGAs, brokers, and founders on distribution and specialization. This conversation documents why he finally decided to build an MGA himself and what most people misunderstand about why MGAs actually struggle. This is not a product story. It is a distribution and systems story. What T...

In this episode of Age of the MGA, we sit down with Kyle Geoghan, Founder & CEO of Indemn, to explore a different way of thinking about MGAs—one that prioritizes learning, distribution, and clarity before scale. Kyle shares how he built an MGA as a laboratory, not just a business, and what that unlocked along the way. What This Episode Covers: ✅ Using an MGA as a testing ground for distributi...

Most people think MGAs are built in boardrooms, pitch decks, or Slack channels. They’re not. They’re built in rooms like Target Markets. In this on-location mini-episode of The Age of the MGA, we go inside one of the most important deal-making events in specialty insurance to unpack what actually happens when programs get launched, capacity gets secured, and founders make real moves. This is not t...

Most MGAs don’t fail because of underwriting. They fail because they misunderstand where risk actually lives, how hard insurance products are to rebuild, and what it really takes to make the economics work. In this episode of The Age of the MGA, we sit down with Megan Bingham-Walker, Founder of Anansi, to unpack one of the most honest MGA build stories we’ve featured. No pitch decks. No hype. Just...

If You Run an MGA, This Might Be the Most Important Interview You Watch This Year In this episode of The Age of the MGA Podcast, we sit down with John Songin, President & CUO of Worldlink Specialty, the operator behind one of the most interesting and misunderstood niches in the specialty program world:  Aviation MGAs. Most people see aviation underwriting as “too small,” “too technical,” or “t...

Most MGAs sell policies. The great ones sell outcomes. In this episode of The Age of the MGA Podcast, Charlie Hanbury, Founder & CEO of Samphire Risk, reveals how he built one of the most innovative crisis-response MGAs in the market—by focusing on what truly matters when everything goes wrong: speed, expertise, and trust. From Somali piracy to active-assailant incidents, Charlie and the Samph...

Most MGA founders fail before they ever hit $10M in premium. Why? Because they never master the three things that matter most: distribution, product, and capacity. In this episode of The Age of the MGA Podcast, Amit (actuary, founder, advisor, and all-around industry legend) breaks down the brutal truths, tactical frameworks, and hard-won lessons that MGA founders need to hear.  No fluff. No sugar...