For this Advisory Report, AAIS spoke with its Vice President of Products, John Kadous. He discussed current issues for insurance carriers, opportunities in the MGA segment, how AAIS is supporting its Members, and more.

Issues Insurance Carriers are Facing

While Kadous believes the biggest issue insurance carriers are facing is related to reinsurance, there are a lot of other challenges affecting their businesses. “There’s a lot of challenges with keeping up with the latest technology,” he said. However, Kadous doesn’t view advancements in insuretech necessarily as a problem, but more of an opportunity for the insurance industry as a whole.

Opportunities in the MGA Segment

Kadous has noticed that a lot of new startups are rolling out as MGAs, which he finds interesting. “What we see there is an opportunity for front-end carriers in particular,” he shared. “But in addition to that, there is an opportunity for AAIS to engage directly with those MGAs, learn more about what they're doing, and pull them into some of the discussions on our councils.” Kadous further explained how AAIS is creating a new membership class that will allow MGAs to come on board as AAIS non-voting Members, but still be able to utilize its programs directly without needing to pull their front-end carrier in as an AAIS Member. “We think it's a change for the better,” he emphasized. “This membership option is going to really open up the MGA space and enable us to invite them into our community.”

AAIS: Supporting its Members in a Tough Market

One way AAIS is currently supporting its Members is through its Product Deployment Platform (PDP). “When companies go to adopt a program or update a program, there are always expenses involved from the company perspective,” Kadous explained. “We're working on our [PDP] and building out some really terrific assets that are going to help in terms of getting a product up and running or updated and delivering things such as data tables digitally.” In addition, AAIS also has Mind Maps, which essentially explains how to program a form’s logic and how to program the entire manual. “Mind Maps tries to simplify things as much as possible to make either a transition or an update much less painful,” Kadous assured.

To view the full interview with John Kadous, please click the video above.