Sian Fisher managing director of OIM Underwriting Limited was in Palm Desert to meet with AAMGA organisers as momentum gathered for the formation of the UKMGA Association.

“We have had some very positive and constructive meeting over the past three days and I believe we may well be in a position in the summer to put forward some concrete proposals to our perspective membership,” said Fisher.

However while the new association has an agreed constitution Fisher said the way in which the UK market was operated made it difficult to clearly define the membership.

“What we see in the US is a far greater degree of transparency in terms of the roles that the intermediaries carry out,” she explained. “Here it is clear if you are an agent, a pure MGA, a wholesale broker or a retail broker. In the UK there is not the clarity of roles and while the FSA does distinguish between a wholesale and retail broker there is not the level of differentiation we see in the USA.”

The strategy committee which is headed by former Lloyd’s underwriter Reg Brown has done its research and identified 250 pure MGA firms which would from the core membership and a further 1500 firms which have a binding authority operation to some extent.

“The aim is to start with the core 250 MGAs and then look at the other areas,” she explained. “In reality the market is split between the MGAs the third part administrators and the brokers and what we will need to do is look at the membership where the lines start to blur and decide on where we can provide the necessary support.”

Fisher added: “There area lot of people who would be keen to start MGAs, can meet the regulatory requirements and have the skills needed to make a success but then struggle to find the capital to start the business and also to get access to the underwriting capacity.

“What we hope to do is provide the ability to help MGAs access capacity and deliver support in other areas.”

The next step is to discuss the association with the prospective members to get their buy in and provide the funding to appoint a full time head of the association. The committee are in discussion with the existing associations such as Biba and the IUA to provide back office and administration support.