How customers research and buy insurance keeps evolving, as technology drives more personalisation and convenience. Most customers no longer have the time or patience for face-to-face meetings and heavy form-filling. At the same time, economic pressure means companies have to do more with less, increasing efficiency in distribution while still driving ROI.
Regularly reviewing and updating your distribution model is essential to keep up with policyholders’ evolving preferences and with new technology and channels emerging all the time, MGAs and insurers have more scope to innovate than ever.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. What works depends on the type of insurance, the customer segment and the market. Some products suit a fully online, self-service approach, others are still too complex for digital-only sales. A tailored, omnichannel approach is key and every MGA or insurer should be constantly reassessing its channel mix and the technology behind it.
Here are the key trends they should be focusing on:
Customer-centric distribution
Effective distribution starts with genuinely understanding the customer, through the right data. Understanding the risks customers face, how they behave and where they go for information lets MGAs and insurers design their whole product and distribution strategy around conversion, constantly testing and learning what works. Data isn’t just for winning new customers either, it’s just as valuable for cross-selling and upselling to improve customer lifetime value.
Tech and data-enabled broker relationships
Brokers remain the dominant distribution channel for riskier insurance products: they held an 83.2% share of UK commercial insurance in 2023, rising to an estimated 83.5% in 2024. What’s changing is how insurers and MGAs support them: data and technology now help target the most profitable segments and use AI to process broker submissions and generate quotes quickly, with minimal legwork.
Insly’s AI layer, Nora, is built for exactly this: brokers can submit customer and risk details in any format, Word, PDF, email, even handwritten notes and Nora extracts and uploads the data in the right format for quote and bind systems automatically. That removes the need for brokers to re-key submissions into multiple systems and gives underwriters clean data without spending time on manual entry, Insly estimates this can triple an MGA’s broker submission processing capacity.
Highly personalised D2C approach
Brokers still dominate much of the market, but there’s real opportunity in selling direct, particularly for consumer and SME insurance, which tends to be simpler and driven by life events and growth milestones. D2C means no commissions to pay and full ownership of the customer relationship, useful for cross-sell, upsell and renewals, though it’s a genuine investment, direct sales need significant marketing spend to work.
Insurers and MGAs in this space compete on flexibility and personalisation, with on-demand and usage-based insurance letting customers switch cover on and off as needed. Providers increasingly lean on AI and automation, chatbots, automated underwriting, personalised recommendations, to make buying as convenient as possible with minimal form-filling.
Platforms like Insly can streamline onboarding end to end, for example integrating underwriting tools into CRM systems to prompt customers when it’s time to review or renew. Automated underwriting also brings real time and cost advantages by cutting manual processing time.
Embedded Insurance and partnerships
Embedded insurance isn’t new, travel cover bundled with a holiday booking, gadget cover with a new phone, have been around for years. What’s changed is the breadth of products sold this way: you can now buy car insurance when you buy the car, or home insurance with a mortgage. The global market is projected to grow from $145 billion in 2025 to $1.23 trillion by 2033. Insly’s 2025 acquisition of Socrates Systems added specialist embedded-distribution expertise to the group. Socrates built the platform behind GAPinsure.com’s launch of monthly GAP insurance, sold direct and through partners, which hit 120% of its first-year sales target with 82% of policies bought on mobile.
Buy-and-build distribution models
Private equity interest in insurance has kept growing and accepting external investment to fund M&A remains an effective way for companies to reach new markets. Deal activity did soften through 2024, but picked back up through 2025, with 211 carrier and broker deals globally, up from around 200 in 2024 and a sharp rise in aggregate deal value driven by larger, more strategic transactions. That trend brings the added benefit of economies of scale in the software and technology used to automate distribution and policy administration.
Facilitating innovation in insurance distribution
Making the most of existing and new distribution channels demands the right IT foundation, for gathering data-driven insight, building new products quickly, integrating with partners and tracking results. This is where a low-risk approach to technology matters: MGAs and insurers need to explore new distribution channels without betting the business on a risky, drawn-out systems overhaul.
We work with 70+ MGAs and insurers and on average our customers handle double the gross written premium they managed on their previous systems.
