The evolving risk landscape, rising customer expectations and fierce competition all make insurance product management critical to the success of MGAs and insurers. These businesses must consistently offer the right protection, at the right price, in an appealing way, to keep growing market share and revenue.
But MGAs and Insurers face real obstacles: long, convoluted development cycles, siloed data and legacy systems that slow everything down. To get ahead, MGAs and insurers need to actively improve their product management practices to launch better, more profitable products faster, without sacrificing customer experience.
This guide covers the steps MGAs and insurers can take to build an industry-leading product management process.
What is Insurance Product Management?
Insurance product management spans everything involved in developing, launching and optimising insurance products, including:
- Analysing data to identify market trends and customer needs
- Working with underwriters to develop the product, points of differentiation, and policy wording
- Developing pricing
- Securing reinsurance partners where required
- Developing a distribution strategy, direct or via brokers
- Performance monitoring and optimisation
MGAs and Insurerss need a keen eye for trends. Recent years have seen new products cover everything from drones and the gig economy to specialty niches like sports memorabilia (insured by Insly customer Stadium Insurance) and institutional bitcoin custody (insured by Insly customer AnchorWatch). That takes a solid grasp of risk assessment too, working closely with actuaries and underwriters so products are priced appropriately and risk exposure is managed well. Staying on top of telematics, IoT, wearable tech and AI matters too, since each can create a genuine point of differentiation in how products are delivered, risks are monitored, or claims are paid.
The product management challenges faced by insurers and MGAs
MGAs and Insurerss contend with diverse stakeholders, data silos and legacy systems, making product management slow and inefficient. Insurance executives interviewed for Deloitte’s analysis on modernising product development report that a new insurance product typically takes 12 to 18 months to create and launch, while modifying existing cover takes three to six months. With how fast the risk landscape moves, that pace increasingly isn’t fast enough to respond to customer demand or get ahead of the market.
On top of that, customers now expect to buy cover any time, via any channel, with flexibility over contract length and scope, without jargon or complexity. That means genuinely modernising how MGAs and insurers work: a customer-centric view rather than a product-centric one.
Key strategies for effective insurance product management
Utilise roadmaps for strategic planning
Product roadmaps align stakeholders, provide context for decisions and guide the whole product lifecycle. A good roadmap maps the development trajectory and aligns with overall business strategy and helps plan resourcing across three levels of activity: new products, product refreshes and ongoing tweaks. Every relevant department, underwriting, claims, sales, customer service, should be involved in building it. A strong roadmap should:
- Start with a clear vision and rationale
- Include conversations with all stakeholders before work begins
- Use themes rather than specific features to keep discussions strategic
- Have separate tracks for new products, revamps and tweaks
- Treat cybersecurity and regulatory compliance as ongoing themes, not afterthoughts
Update legacy infrastructure and leverage low-code product builders
Updating inflexible legacy systems is one of the fastest ways to accelerate development. Low-code product builders are changing product management by letting MGAs and Insurerss and business users create and modify products without heavy IT involvement, cutting the lengthy IT queues and complex dev cycles that traditional development involves. That lets teams rapidly prototype, test and launch products or variations in response to market changes, customer needs or competitive pressure, including tailoring products for different markets, channels or regulatory environments.
Prioritise data integration and API connectivity
Seamless data sharing across systems and partners is critical to understanding customer needs and developing and testing new products and to ongoing optimisation of what’s already live. Connecting to third-party data, credit bureaus, motor vehicle records, property databases, supports better underwriting decisions and more competitive pricing. API-driven connectivity also enables real-time data flow, which underpins embedded insurance and insurance ecosystems, opening new revenue streams and deepening customer relationships.
Embed product innovation in the business and embrace agile
Fast product development only works if product and innovation teams are genuinely integrated. Multifunctional teams and agile methodologies help: breaking work into smaller, manageable cycles allows more frequent releases and faster pivots based on feedback and helps prioritise features by business value so effort goes where it has the most impact.
Focus on customer-centric design
Customer expectations are increasingly shaped by experience with more digitally advanced industries, so user-friendly design directly affects acquisition, retention and ROI. IoT devices and wearables now let customers track and manage their own risk exposure, some cyber security MGAs already pair security tooling with traditional cover this way. Simplifying the quote-and-bind journey, pre-filling information, clear guidance throughout and thoughtfully automated underwriting that gives instant decisions on straightforward cases, all improve the experience while freeing underwriters to focus on the complex cases that need real judgement.
Implement industry-specific metrics
Without meaningful KPIs, it’s impossible to assess product performance or spot where to improve. Track:
- Policy retention rates, to indicate product satisfaction and competitiveness and how this varies across customer segments
- Customer satisfaction scores for claims processing, since the claims experience often defines a customer’s overall view of their insurer
- Conversion rates through the sales funnel, showing how well product marketing and sales are working
- Time-to-market for new products and product changes, since this is increasingly the metric that separates leaders from the rest of the pack
Invest in continuous learning and professional development
Technology, customer expectations and regulation are all moving fast, so MGAs and Insurerss need to keep learning to keep up. Industry conferences, workshops on agile product management and design thinking and relevant certifications all help keep skills current.
Quick tips for fast insurance product launches
Launching insurance products quickly and efficiently is becoming increasingly important in today’s fast-paced market. However, speed should not come at the expense of quality or compliance. Here’s a quick re-cap of these best practices:
- Define product objectives and scope before development begins: thorough market research, defined features and pricing and early involvement from underwriting, claims and legal to avoid costly delays later.
- Clarify target customers and their needs early, both end customers and internal users like underwriters and claims handlers, understanding their workflows leads to better design.
- Re-engineer business processes for efficiency: streamline underwriting, automate where it makes sense and redesign customer touchpoints.
- Partner with the right insurtech partners: Insly’s Product Builder is built around what we call the Insly six: fast time-to-market, low financial risk, AI-enabled, scalable flexibility, accounting accuracy and a proven track record with 70+ MGAs and insurers. In practice, that means low-code changes business users can make themselves, without leaning on IT or risking a costly, drawn-out build.
- Use flexible, open solutions that integrate easily with existing systems and future technology, cutting time-to-market and making future updates easier.
- Create clear documentation and training so every user, internal and external, can use and support the new product from day one.
- Consider a phased launch: start with a minimum viable product and iterate on real market feedback rather than waiting for perfect.
Product management, ready for the future
Effective insurance product management combines industry expertise, strategic thinking and technological savvy. Done well, it drives innovation, improves operational efficiency and delivers products that meet customers’ evolving needs and the bottom line.
The industry isn’t slowing down: AI, personalisation, ecosystem-based insurance and sustainability continue to drive innovation. MGAs and Insurerss who keep updating their skills, embrace new technology and stay close to both customer needs and market dynamics are the ones who’ll shape what comes next.
That’s exactly where tools like Nora, Insly’s AI layer and low-code product building come in, automating the market-research, drafting and testing work that used to eat months out of a launch. Fusion Specialty, an Australian M&A insurance MGA, cut the resources needed for submission entry from six staff to one full-time employee after implementing Nora, a 6x gain in workforce leverage with no loss of accuracy or throughput, according to Insly’s Eight Critical AI Decisions report. Where the industry average for launching a new product is still 12 to 18 months, Insly customers can typically scope a first draft in 2 to 3 weeks and have a fully built solution ready in 1 to 3 months.
We work with 70+ MGAs and insurers and on average our customers handle double the gross written premium they managed on their previous systems.
