11 May 2026
Introducing Ecosystem Unfiltered: Candid Conversations from the Insurance Ecosystem
There is no shortage of ideas in specialty insurance. What is harder to find are practical examples of what is actually working.
That is the premise behind Ecosystem Unfiltered, a new podcast from Accelerant hosted by our Head of Strategic Partnerships, TJ Olonilua. The goal is straightforward: bring together operators to talk candidly about how they are building their businesses, where they are seeing friction, and what is delivering results.
The Problem the Marketplace Was Built to Solve
In episode 1, a large portion of the conversation focuses on a familiar challenge for MGAs: operational fragmentation.
As businesses grow, they accumulate tools, vendors, and workflows that are not always well integrated. Finding the right partners becomes a project in itself.
Adam Masojada, Accelerant’s Chief Ecosystem Officer, describes how this played out: Members were spending months sourcing vendors for things like sanction screening. It was not unusual to see 15 to 20 vendor demos for a single capability.
At the same time, that work was being repeated across the ecosystem. Multiple MGAs evaluating the same vendors, asking the same questions, and negotiating independently.
The Accelerant Marketplace was built as a response to that pattern.
As Adam put it, the goal was simple: stop every MGA from having to “reinvent the wheel” every time a new capability was needed.
Launched just a few months ago, the Marketplace brings together more than 100 vetted vendors across underwriting, data, operations, claims, and compliance, serving over 280 MGAs across North America and Europe.
Vendors are curated through a selective process, with roughly 30% making it onto the platform, so instead of beginning from scratch, MGAs can move directly to evaluating solutions that are already vetted and aligned with how they operate.
From Theory to Application: The NBS Example
The value of that model becomes clearer when applied in practice.
Steve Cowman and Rachel Oldroyd from NBS Underwriting provide a detailed look at how they are using the Accelerant Marketplace today.
NBS is not a small operation. They work with 1,200 brokers, offer 35 products, and manage approximately £120M in premium. Their focus is on scaling efficiently while maintaining underwriting discipline.
One of the most immediate opportunities they identified was in submission processing. Like many MGAs, they were dealing with double-keying: brokers would enter data into their own systems, and NBS would then need to re-enter that information into theirs. It was time-consuming, error-prone, and slowed down the entire underwriting process.
Through the Accelerant Marketplace, they were introduced to Heron AI, and the result was a materially different workflow. Submissions could be ingested and processed with turnaround times moving to roughly two minutes from submission to terms in the pilot phase.
As Rachel described it, the goal was not to replace underwriting, but to remove the manual steps that slow everything down before underwriting even begins. That pilot has since moved into live deployment, with a plan to roll it out across all 35 products by the end of 2026.
Consolidating Spend and Increasing Influence
The conversation also highlights another dimension of the Accelerant Marketplace: leverage.
Vendors are no longer working with a single MGA—they’re supporting a broader, more valuable customer base, which has two clear effects:
First, pricing improves. NBS, for example, spends roughly £1M annually with Cardinus, and with 26 other Accelerant members using the same provider, costs have come down meaningfully. With pricing negotiated at scale, members see discounts of around 23% on average across Marketplace partnerships.
Second, influence increases. With more demand concentrated in one place, vendors like SchemeServe are more responsive to feedback and more willing to adapt their product roadmap to better serve MGAs.
The result is a different kind of relationship through a shared environment where scale benefits every participant.
Learning from Operators
What makes this conversation particularly valuable is its perspective.
It is not a discussion about what the industry might look like in the future. It is a discussion about what is happening now, from people actively operating in the market.
Balancing speed with discipline. Navigating shifting market conditions. Making decisions with incomplete information. Strategizing AI adoption. These are the realities that MGAs face every day.