The range of opportunities and challenges facing the wholesale insurance market are vast and consequential — so much so that in 2014, the American Association of Managing General Agents (AAMGA) created a specialized Emerging Issues and Trends Committee to study these and other topics.

This industry-wide, interdisciplinary group of professionals is solely focused on the future, conducting a survey to draft an annual heat map of these risks in collaboration with risk management and insurance departments at universities all across the country. Taking what has been learned, we have provided the industry with valuable, practical information on how to best understand the risks, educate our members and diligently prepare to underwrite them.

This means exhaustively examining those matters that promise to alter the way we do business, and also those that will impact our marketplace. The goal is to help wholesale insurance professionals address fundamental issues, such as:

• Determining the need or desire to write the risk;

• Developing a cost structure for such risk;

• Drafting the proper manuscript form or using existing forms to ensure the risks are properly secured; and

• Identifying risks the wholesale insurance market may not be willing to undertake.

The data from our industry-wide survey showed concern — as well as promise — on several immediate issues. Those issues identified for the highest probability of altering the insurance landscape with the most severity in the shortest period included: