Chief Operating Officer

Our client is a newly launched MGA/MGU here in the US. This opportunity will include the responsibility for managing, building and growing a successful MGA organization. While the preference is to locate this role in the NY/NJ metro area, our client is open to the best qualified person to be located elsewhere across the contiguous 48 states.

Led by an experienced executive team with deep backgrounds in specialty insurance and MGA operations, our client offers an entrepreneurial and growth-oriented environment that emphasizes market responsiveness, strong broker relationships, and operational agility. The organization competes in a commercial auto marketplace that continues to experience significant disruption driven by social inflation, litigation severity, rising claims costs, and tightening underwriting capacity. Against this backdrop, our client has positioned itself as a nimble specialty platform capable of capitalizing on market opportunities through focused underwriting expertise and scalable national distribution. For the right individual, the company represents an opportunity to join a highly specialized insurance organization with strong growth potential, direct market visibility, and a leadership culture centered on execution, accessibility, and innovation.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end transformation of the transportation insurance Program Manager business into a fully integrated MGA.
• Define and operationalize workflows, service-level agreements (SLAs), internal controls, and key operational indicators (KPIs) to support scalable growth and profitability.
• Establish underwriting guidelines, authority levels, referral processes, and portfolio management discipline.
• Partner with actuarial and risk leadership to refine product structure and loss performance.
• Lead strategy to diversify and expand carrier and reinsurance relationships.
• Source, negotiate and structure fronting, reinsurance and hybrid capacity arrangements.
• Select, implement and oversee core MGA systems including policy administration, rating, billing and claims platforms.
• Recruit, develop and lead key functional leaders across underwriting, operations, claims oversight, and finance and reporting.

Qualifications

• Deep understanding of MGA economics, including loss ratios, expense ratios, commission structures and portfolio management.
• 10 years of progressive leadership experience in the Property and Casualty insurance sector with a deep expertise in MGA growth and program business.
• Preference for someone with strong commercial auto and trucking experience.
• Demonstrated experience negotiating carrier and reinsurance capacity and managing profitability across insurance programs.

If you have an entrepreneurial spirit and are looking to build and run an operation, this may be the opportunity you've been looking for. It's an opportunity with an already successful product and foundational book of business with which to build upon.