A carrier's authority runs further than any one system can see. The board reserves it, the executives running underwriting and claims hold it, the desks exercise it within a limit every day, and the MGAs, coverholders, and administrators carry it outward, binding and settling in the carrier's name. No one system holds the current answer every examiner, auditor, and governance disclosure asks: who is authorized to underwrite, settle, pay, sign, and bind on behalf of this carrier today, and within what limit? Aptly holds that answer as one live, audit-ready system, internally and across every delegated relationship.
Delegation of authority (DOA) is the formal structure that defines who can underwrite, settle, pay, sign, and bind on behalf of a carrier, up to what limit, and under what conditions. In insurance, that structure has to hold inside the carrier and outward to every MGA, coverholder, and third-party administrator. The authority is documented carefully, and current nowhere. Carriers document authority as carefully as any regulated industry: board resolutions and reserved-matters schedules, executive delegations, underwriting guidelines that set branch and line limits, claims-handling manuals with authority matrices, and binding authority agreements with every managing general agent, coverholder, and administrator. The problem is not that the authority is undefined. The problem is that it lives across resolutions, manuals, signature cards, and contracts, held by different functions and different companies, updated on different cycles, and impossible to see as one current picture when an examiner, an auditor, or a governance disclosure asks for it. In more than a quarter of organizations (28%), the delegation of authority does not address who is permitted to sign at all.
The authority types get conflated. Underwriting authority, claims settlement authority, claims payment authority, reserving authority, and signing authority are distinct, and people and entities routinely hold one and not the others. When they act on the wrong one, the carrier discovers it during an examination rather than before the risk is bound or the claim is paid.
Outward delegation multiplies the exposure. A managing general agent binds risk, and a third-party administrator settles claims, in the carrier's name, up to limits set in a contract. More premium is being delegated to more third parties than ever, yet the carrier's record of who holds what delegated authority, within what limit, and as of what date is often a spreadsheet and a binder full of agreements.
The picture is reconstructed, not maintained. When a financial examiner, an external auditor, or the corporate governance disclosure asks who was authorized to underwrite, settle, pay, or sign on a given date, internally or at a delegated party, the answer is assembled by hand from manuals, memos, contracts, and email, often long after the fact.
86%
Only 14% of organizations embed delegation of authority within an IT system. The other 86% keep it as a document, most often on the company intranet, where it goes out of date the moment a role changes.A policy on paper is not the same as a live record of who held that authority on a given date. In insurance, that drift is expensive: a risk bound above an MGA's delegated authority, a claim settled past a delegated limit, or a signature on a treaty or binding authority agreement the signer was not authorized to give, each surfaces in an audit or a regulatory examination rather than before the commitment is made.
Between who people are and where the company is bound. Your identity system governs the door: it knows who someone is and what they can log into. Aptly governs the decision once they are through it. Your policy administration, claims, underwriting, finance, and binder systems are where the company gets bound and claims get paid. Neither identity nor those systems knows what a person or a delegated entity is authorized to underwrite, settle, pay, sign, or commit, and up to what limit. That authority lives in board resolutions, executive delegations, underwriting guidelines, claims manuals, and binding authority agreements, outside every system that needs it.
Aptly is the authority layer beneath those systems, governing the authority they execute against. It holds the carrier's delegated authority as a live model: who holds underwriting, claims settlement, payment, reserving, and signing authority, for what line and entity, up to what limit and under what conditions, internally and at every MGA, coverholder, and administrator, with each delegation's source instrument attached and acceptance recorded. Connected to your identity, finance, policy, and claims systems, it keeps that authority current as roles, limits, and relationships change. Keep your core and binder systems for execution; add Aptly as the live authority layer across them.
One source of truth, from the board to every delegated party
Holds authority by charter and bylaws. Reserves risk appetite, capital, and major reinsurance, and delegates the rest.
Receives the board's delegation, then sub-delegates by formal instrument to the executives.
Underwriting authority, and the guidelines that set branch and line binding limits.
Claims settlement, claims payment, and reserving authority, within limit.
Underwrite, settle, and pay within limit, with referral above it.
Bind risk or settle claims in the carrier's name, up to the limits set in the binding authority agreement, with referral above.
Named on the carrier's bank mandates and binding authority agreements. The only parties who can bind each entity.
Separate entities and delegated parties, one model
Four capabilities, one system of record. Built for the CFO, general counsel, and chief compliance officer accountable for it.
The obligations that make current authority non-negotiable. These obligations do not all sit in one office, and they do not pause between audits. Each one assumes the carrier can show who was authorized to act, internally and at every delegated party, and on what date. The effect is that an examination becomes a lookup rather than a reconstruction: the authority that stood on the bind date is retrievable in its exact form, with the actor and the prior value on every change. Aptly maps your authority model to what each one requires:
A multi-line carrier delegates binding authority for a coastal property program to a managing general agent, up to a set limit by line and territory, and delegates claims handling on that program to a third-party administrator, up to a per-claim settlement limit. In Aptly, each is a Recipient holding a delegated authority with lineage back to the Chief Underwriting Officer and Chief Claims Officer who granted it. When a dispute arises over the program, the carrier suspends the agent's binding authority during the pendency of the dispute, exactly as the binding authority agreement and the model law allow, in one action.
The suspension cascades everywhere at once. The authorized-signatory and binding records update, the administrator's claims-settlement authority above the referral threshold routes back to the carrier's Chief Claims Officer, and any branch underwriter relying on the program sees the change. When the carrier is examined, and when it files its corporate governance disclosure and its Model Audit Rule report, Aptly recalls exactly who held what authority, internally and at every delegated party, on any date, with the instrument behind it. Reference BA-2026-00471.
Use case
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Bring your delegation structure for one line, one claims operation, one licensed subsidiary, or one MGA or TPA relationship, and the authority each one holds. We will show you the single, current, audit-ready view Aptly produces, using your authority data.
