Why MGAs Are Outgrowing Their Document Management Systems

The MGA Growth Trajectory and Its Infrastructure Problem

Managing General Agents have become the growth engine of the specialty insurance market. While traditional insurers struggle with legacy operations and digital transformation, MGAs are capturing market share by moving faster, specializing deeper, and operating leaner.

But that growth is creating an infrastructure crisis. The document management systems that worked fine when you were processing 500 submissions a month and managing 2,000 active policies break down completely when you scale to 2,000 submissions and 10,000 policies.

The problem isn't capacity—most document management systems can technically handle more volume. The problem is that generic DMS platforms were never designed for the specific workflows that define MGA operations. And those gaps become painful as you scale.

50% of MGAs report they're at the earliest stages of digital transformation, meaning most are making technology decisions right now that will either enable or constrain their growth for the next 5 years.

The Margin Pressure That Makes Inefficiency Deadly

MGAs operate on retained commissions that are typically in the single digits—often 3-7% of premium after paying producer commissions and covering expenses. When your margin is that thin, operational efficiency isn't a nice-to-have. It's the difference between profitability and unsustainability.

The Math of Manual Document Processing

Consider what happens when your team manually processes submissions:

• Average submission requires 30-45 minutes of document handling
• Extracting data from submission forms, ACORD documents, loss runs, and supporting documentation
• Creating quote files, routing for underwriter review, filing documents appropriately
• Following up for missing information, re-keying data that arrives in non-standard formats

At 40 minutes per submission with a fully-loaded labor cost of $50/hour, you're spending $33 in processing cost per submission. When you're writing $5,000 average premium policies with 5% retained commission ($250), spending $33 just on document processing consumes 13% of your margin before any underwriting, claims, or overhead costs.

Scale that to 500 submissions per month and you're spending $16,500 monthly—nearly $200,000 annually—just on document handling. For a growing MGA, that's a full-time underwriter's salary being consumed by administrative overhead.

Why Generic DMS Can't Solve This

You might assume the solution is implementing a proper document management system. SharePoint, M-Files, NetDocuments—there are plenty of enterprise DMS platforms that promise to organize your documents and improve efficiency.

The problem: these are generic document management tools. They're designed for law firms, accounting practices, and general corporate document storage. They know nothing about insurance operations, MGA workflows, or the specific document types you handle daily.

What you get with generic DMS:

• Storage and retrieval (but you still manually organize everything)
• Search functionality (but only if documents were filed and tagged correctly)
• Version control (useful, but doesn't reduce processing time)
• Permission management (necessary, but not productivity-enhancing)

What you don't get:

• Automatic extraction of data from ACORD forms
• Classification of submission documents by type
• Routing based on coverage type or authority limits
• Integration with bordereaux reporting requirements
• Understanding of delegated authority compliance needs

A generic DMS helps you store documents more consistently. But it doesn't reduce the time spent processing those documents because it doesn't understand what they are or what you need to do with them.

The Three MGA-Specific Workflows That Generic DMS Breaks

MGAs have operational requirements that don't exist in general business contexts. Generic DMS platforms can't handle them because they weren't designed to.

1. Bordereaux Processing and Reporting

Bordereaux—the detailed transaction reports MGAs must provide to insurer partners—require extracting and structuring data from documents processed throughout the month. You need:

• Policy data from submission documents
• Premium allocation across multiple coverage types
• Commission calculations based on producer agreements
• Claims data tied back to specific policies
• Endorsement and cancellation tracking

Generic DMS stores these documents but doesn't extract the structured data needed for bordereaux. You end up manually pulling information from stored documents into spreadsheets, then formatting for each insurer's specific bordereaux template.

This is where the "we spent money on a DMS but we're still using spreadsheets for everything that matters" complaint comes from. The DMS is doing document storage while manual processes handle the actual work.

2. Delegated Authority Compliance Documentation

Operating under delegated authority means proving to insurer partners that you're following binding authority guidelines. This requires audit trails showing:

• Submission documents were complete before binding
• Underwriting decisions stayed within authority limits
• Required approvals were obtained for exceptions
• Policy documentation matches binding authority requirements
• Claims were handled according to delegated authority terms

Generic DMS can show you stored documents with timestamps. But it can't show you that a submission was complete at the time of binding, or that an underwriter reviewed specific risk factors before approving coverage, or that claims followed the process specified in your authority agreement.

That compliance evidence requires understanding insurance workflows, not just document storage. Purpose-built MGA platforms capture this automatically as part of normal operations.

3. Submission Intake and Automated Routing

Submissions arrive via email, broker portals, API feeds from aggregators, and sometimes still by fax. Each submission includes:

• ACORD applications (125, 126, 140, etc. depending on line of business)
• Loss runs from prior carriers
• Supporting documentation (photos, inspection reports, financial statements)
• Producer correspondence and specific underwriting requests

A functional submission process needs to:

• Extract data from ACORD forms automatically
• Classify supporting documents by type
• Route to appropriate underwriter based on coverage type and complexity
• Flag missing required documents
• Create submission file in underwriting system

Generic DMS provides an upload folder. Everything else—extraction, classification, routing—you're doing manually. The DMS becomes a storage endpoint rather than a processing tool.

The Hidden Costs of the Wrong System

Beyond direct processing costs, generic DMS creates hidden expenses that grow as you scale.

Training Burden and Staff Turnover

When your document system doesn't align with insurance workflows, your team needs to learn workarounds. New staff require extensive training on:

• How to name files according to undocumented conventions
• Which folder structures are actually used vs. what's configured
• Where to find documents that should be in the DMS but aren't
• Which processes still happen in spreadsheets despite having a DMS

This institutional knowledge lives in people's heads rather than in systems. When experienced staff leave, their replacement struggles for months learning the quirks of how your operation actually works versus how the systems suggest it should work.

Duplicate Data Entry Across Systems

Because generic DMS doesn't integrate with underwriting or policy administration systems, data flows manually:

• Enter submission data extracted from ACORD form into underwriting system
• Re-enter same data into DMS tags or metadata for searchability
• Copy data again into bordereaux spreadsheets for reporting
• Re-key information when insurer partner requests specific formats

Same data, entered 3-4 times across different systems. Each entry creates opportunity for error and time waste. The DMS was supposed to reduce manual work but instead adds another system requiring data entry.

Scaling Constraints

Perhaps most critically, generic DMS creates a ceiling on how efficiently you can scale. Manual document processing means growth requires proportional headcount increases:

• Double your submission volume, hire another processor
• Take on another insurer partner with different bordereaux requirements, add staff for monthly reporting
• Expand into new coverage lines, increase underwriting support team

You can't achieve operational leverage—the ability to grow revenue faster than costs—when your systems require linear headcount scaling.

MGAs using generic DMS report needing 1 full-time administrative staff per $3-5M in written premium. Those using purpose-built automation handle $8-12M per staff member—a 2-3x efficiency advantage that compounds as you scale.

What Purpose-Built Actually Means for MGAs

The alternative to generic DMS isn't building custom software. It's adopting platforms designed specifically for MGA operations that understand your workflows natively.

Insurance-Native Document Understanding

Purpose-built systems recognize insurance documents automatically:

• ACORD 125 is identified and data extracted without configuration
• Loss runs are classified and key metrics pulled out
• Property inspection reports are filed and linked to submission
• Producer correspondence is threaded with related submission

This happens automatically because the system was designed for insurance documents, not generic business files. You're not teaching it what an ACORD form is—it already knows.

Workflow Integration, Not Just Storage

Documents don't just get stored—they trigger workflows:

• Submission received triggers routing to appropriate underwriter queue
• Quote document generated creates notification to producer
• Policy bound initiates compliance checklist for delegated authority
• Endorsement request pulls original policy docs automatically
• Claim filed links to policy documents and prior claims history

The document system is integrated with your operational workflow rather than being a separate filing cabinet.

Compliance and Reporting Built In

Bordereaux, delegated authority compliance, insurer reporting—these aren't manual exports from a document storage system. They're automated outputs generated from data already captured during normal operations.

When you need to report premium written by coverage type, the system already knows because it extracted that from ACORD forms during submission. When an insurer partner requests an authority compliance audit, the system generates it from existing workflow data rather than requiring manual compilation.

The Implementation Reality: Easier Than It Looks

The barrier to switching from generic DMS to purpose-built MGA platforms isn't technical complexity. It's the fear of disruption and implementation burden.

The reality: modern platforms are designed for fast implementation because they understand MGA workflows already. You're not customizing everything from scratch—you're configuring based on standard MGA operations.

Typical implementation timeline:

• Week 1: Configure coverage types, authority limits, bordereaux templates
• Week 2: Test submission intake and document extraction with sample files
• Week 3: Pilot with one line of business or one underwriter
• Week 4: Roll out to full team

Historical documents can stay in your existing DMS. New documents flow through the new system. Within 30 days, most MGAs are fully operational on purpose-built platforms.

The difference between generic DMS and insurance-specific platforms isn't just features—it's implementation speed and operational fit.

The Growth Decision Point

Here's the practical decision every growing MGA faces: continue scaling on manual processes and generic tools, or implement purpose-built automation now while you're still small enough to move quickly.

The MGAs that wait until they've scaled to $50M in premium find implementation harder—more staff to retrain, more embedded processes to change, more insurer partners with integration needs. The ones that automate at $10-15M in premium hit $50M with the same operational overhead they had at $20M.

That efficiency advantage compounds. It means higher margins, ability to invest in growth, and capacity to take on more insurer partnerships without proportional cost increases.

Generic DMS helped you move from filing cabinets to digital storage. That was a necessary step. But it's not sufficient for efficient MGA operations at scale. The question is whether you recognize that before growth forces the issue or after you've already hit the scaling wall.

Purpose-built MGA platforms aren't about replacing functional systems. They're about removing the operational constraints that prevent you from efficiently scaling the business you've built.