Anyone have experience buying an insurance broker?

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November 22, 2024

by a searcher from The University of Chicago - Booth School of Business in Denver, CO, USA

We’re looking into strategies for buying or rolling up insurance brokers in the U.S. or Canada and are seeking advice from those who have navigated this space. We’re particularly interested in understanding the best practices and integration challenges. Thank you!

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Reply by a searcher
from Brigham Young University in Lehi, UT, USA
Like others have said, multiples are very high in the industry right now from a swarm of PE and publicly traded brokers. You can find some great free research from MarshBerry. https://www.marshberry.com/

It is also a very dynamic and complex business. It would be very difficult to be successful without retaining a partner or manager that is an insurance expert. The exception to this would maybe be agencies that only operation in a niche or two, or a personal lines only agency as those would take less time to get up to speed on. I have personally never seen someone without insurance experience acquire a brokerage.
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Reply by a searcher
from University of California, Berkeley in Laguna Niguel, CA, USA
The two challenges I would highlight are:
1) smaller brokers are typically heavily owner dependent (e.g., the owner is the primary or only rainmaker)
2) the multiples for larger brokers can be challenging for searchers because they have been bid up by larger PE-backed platforms that are executing roll-up strategies in this space (e.g., Acrisure, Integrity Marketing Group)
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