When $45B in Distribution Meets AI-native Underwriting.

The Excess & Surplus (E&S) market has seen seven consecutive years of double-digit growth, reaching nearly $130 billion. Yet, for many brokers, the workflow remains bogged down by manual reviews and operational delays.

That is the bottleneck MGT and Amwins are aiming to break.

MGT, an AI-native carrier, has announced a strategic partnership with Amwins to bring instant underwriting to the E&S space. By combining Amwins’ massive wholesale reach with MGT’s proprietary AI platform, they are reducing decision times from days to minutes, starting with Lessers' Risk Only (LRO).

But how do you increase speed without sacrificing underwriting rigor? We asked five questions to Chad Nitschke, General Manager of MGT Specialty. We discuss:

• maintaining risk assessment quality at speed.
• Solving specific operational bottlenecks in E&S.
• The roadmap for scaling complex specialty risks.

Read the full interview below to see how they are modernizing the surplus lines market. 

1. How does MGT's AI-driven underwriting platform maintain the necessary underwriting rigor and risk assessment quality while reducing decision times from days to minutes, particularly for complex E&S risks that traditionally require extensive manual review?

MGT was built on the belief that speed and rigor are not mutually exclusive. Our philosophy is “Old School meets New School.” We combine disciplined underwriting fundamentals with modern, AI-native infrastructure.

Our platform is built to complement – and in many cases enhance – the analytical rigor of traditional underwriting by embedding underwriting guidelines, risk segmentation logic, and pricing models directly into our proprietary AI system.

Instead of over-relying on manual data gathering and back-and-forth submissions, our platform ingests third-party data in real time, analyzes risk attributes against our underwriting appetite, and produces a data-driven outcome within minutes. That allows us to eliminate administrative lag while preserving the careful evaluation the E&S market demands.

For E&S risks in particular, rigor is non-negotiable. The platform uses richer, real-time data instead of outdated proxies to assess risk more accurately and fairly. Where additional nuance is required, a human stays in the loop, but they're significantly aided by our use of AI and data – empowered to make and execute high-confidence decisions in minutes rather than the hours or days it would have taken in the past.

The result is underwriting that's both faster and more disciplined. The partnership with Amwins proves that AI can deliver meaningful ROI while maintaining the standards the E&S market demands.

2. With the E&S market experiencing its seventh consecutive year of double-digit growth reaching nearly $130 billion in direct written premiums, what specific operational bottlenecks in traditional E&S workflows does this partnership address, and what measurable efficiency gains are you targeting for brokers and retail agents?

Historically, E&S workflows have been defined by manual intake, email-driven submissions, fragmented documentation, and multi-day or multi-week turnaround times. As volumes have grown, those processes have become increasingly strained.

Our partnership with Amwins addresses several of these bottlenecks directly:

• • Reducing submission friction by streamlining intake through a digital-first workflow

  • Eliminating repetitive manual data entry

  • Compressing quote turnaround times from days or weeks to minutes

  • Delivering clearer segmentation and pricing decisions upfront

For brokers and agents, the most immediate efficiency gain is time. Instead of waiting days for a response on smaller specialty risks, they can receive underwriting decisions quickly. That translates into faster client service, higher close rates, and the ability to focus on advising clients rather than chasing paperwork.

3. The Lessers' Risk Only (LRO) product is described as your first E&S offering through Amwins—what additional E&S product lines or risk classes are you planning to expand into through this partnership, and how will MGT's technology platform scale to accommodate more complex specialty risks beyond small commercial accounts?

In 2026, we have a robust product build roadmap ahead where each new industry class and/or product we’re launching is being informed by actual market needs.

An example of this was our approach to the LRO product. We worked closely with the Amwins team to define pockets of the market where a new product could add value, and that included habitational risks as part of an LRO product. That isn’t an easy segment of the market from a risk perspective, but we wanted to be sure we were solving a true market need for our distribution partner.

As for how our technology platform will scale into more complex specialty risks, we’re benefited greatly by building with an AI-first mindset. We all know technology is adept at executing deterministic rules, which is great for less complex tasks. GenAI, however, is built for complexity, and the proliferation of AI models and their use of reasoning is materially accelerating our ability to reduce highly complex tasks from days/hours to even minutes or seconds, with very high confidence.

4. Given that Amwins handles nearly $50 billion in premium placements through 138+ offices globally, how does the integration of MGT's AI platform into Amwins' existing broker workflows work from a technical and operational standpoint, and what training or onboarding is required for Amwins' retail partners to leverage this instant underwriting capability?

At MGT, we're building to support all of the go-to-market motions that our distribution partners need to be successful.

On the training and onboarding front, it’s been a lot of fun to get to know and develop relationships with the front line teams at Amwins. We’re now working with over 30 of their offices, and have personally visited 12 of them, with more visits on deck. While technology allows us to accomplish the vast majority of what we need remotely, there is no replacement for the relationship building and trust that comes from being in the same room.

5. As an "A-" AM Best rated carrier with $21.6 million in Series B funding, how is MGT balancing rapid growth and technology innovation with the capital requirements and regulatory considerations inherent in expanding E&S market presence, particularly as you scale from 43 states to nationwide coverage?

At MGT, we don’t treat these as competing priorities, as the company's vertically integrated, AI-native model makes them mutually reinforcing.

Traditional carriers face a trade-off between speed and compliance because their legacy systems require manual processes to maintain underwriting discipline. That's expensive and slow. MGT's platform automates rigorous underwriting, which means the company can scale efficiently without sacrificing capital discipline or regulatory standards.

On the capital side, MGT has reached profitability while operating with about $3 million in annual recurring revenue per employee – significantly above industry benchmarks. That efficiency means growth doesn't drain capital reserves. The $21.6 million Series B provides additional runway to invest in compliance infrastructure, reinsurance relationships, and state-by-state regulatory filings as MGT expands its E&S footprint.