Best Insurance Brokerages in the USA | 5-Star Brokerages
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Benchmarks of success
As key intermediaries between clients and insurance carriers, the best brokerages facilitate the purchase of products while providing crucial advisory services, expert claims assistance, and proactive risk management solutions.
Insurance Business America’s 5-Star Brokerages of 2024 have achieved remarkable milestones, with their average figures totaling:
Industry expert Adam Frugoli, vice president at Leavitt Group and recognized as one of IBA’s Top Insurance Brokers 2023, says the best insurance brokerages excel by cultivating a unified culture of success.
“It’s about clearly communicating where the organization is going and making sure you have those goals ready, and everyone is accountable,” Frugoli says.
To identify the top brokerages of the year, participants submitted detailed data on crucial business metrics such as revenue, client numbers, and profit margins.
“The only way that you can possibly continue to compete is through revenue growth. It’s like oxygen,” shares Frugoli.
This year’s best insurance brokerages experienced a significant increase in average total revenue from policies written, from $71.6 million to $92.5 million between 2022 and 2023.
From IBA’s winners, the top five firms by revenue growth were:
CAC Specialty: 40 percent
Allied Insurance Agency: 38 percent
Virtus: 35 percent
Higginbotham: 30 percent
C3 Risk & Insurance: 28 percent
While overall revenue growth is a critical success indicator for brokerages, Frugoli emphasizes the importance of revenue growth per broker, another key benchmark used to evaluate this year’s winners.
Illustrating how these metrics complement each other, Frugoli adds, “They’re both important, and brokers need to be growing. If brokers are growing, that means the overall organization is growing. They are synonymous.”
Maintaining a steady influx of new business is another critical success metric for America’s best insurance brokerages.
“You need to have new clients coming in and a good mixture of clients because attrition happens. The lifeblood of any organization is growing your client count,” Frugoli notes.
Of IBA’s 2024 winners, the brokerages with the highest client growth were:
AssuredPartners: 92 percent
C3 Risk & Insurance Services: 79 percent
American Risk Management Resources Network: 33 percent
Higginbotham: 20 percent
Allied Insurance Agency: 14 percent
Morrison Insurance Services: 14 percent
In an era where reputation and customer service are paramount, Frugoli highlights the importance of viewing insurance as a service. Brokerages, he asserts, have a responsibility to “serve the people in our industries.”
This is supported by having strong employees. Reflecting on its practices, winner AssuredPartners states, “We’re proud of our commitment to developing the next generation of talent in the insurance industry. We started a mentorship program that pairs newer team members with experienced ‘mentors’ in the company. These mentors help our team members reach their full potential.”
Also emphasizing the importance of customer service is winner Virtus, whose 2023 client retention rate sat at an impressive 93 percent.
Frugoli also points out the impact of market dynamics on client retention.
“Right now, we are in a harder market, so premiums are increasing, and revenues and fees are also increasing. But it won’t always be this way. There will be times when we are in a softer market and premiums will be declining and we are going to need more clients.”
The third pillar underpinning the best insurance brokerages is what they can offer clients.
Explaining what makes the difference, Frugoli says, “Good strategies are about being diversified, meaning you must have areas of expertise. You don’t want to be all personal lines, you want to have a good flow of personal lines, but you also want to have a strong commercial line diversified across different industries.”
Across IBA’s 2024 winners, the top five who have grown their policies are:
Allied Insurance Agency: 55 percent
C3 Risk & Insurance Services: 52 percent
AssuredPartners: 37 percent
American Risk Management Resources Network: 35 percent
Morrison Insurance Services: 33 percent
Some of the other winning brokerages shared how their success is partly predicated on growing their policies over 2022 and 2023.
Element22 Insurance Services underlined how it has focused on challenging cases. “We are proud of maintaining and building additional partnerships with our agents and carriers to implement customized solutions for hard-to-place commercial risks.”
And ePremium Insurance Agency commented, “We launched two new products and entered a new distribution vertical. We have exceeded top and bottom-line growth goals.”
Offering additional guidance to the best brokerages, Frugoli explains, “My biggest advice is having a culture that attracts top talent. Individuals who are hungry and really want to win and grow.”
IBA asked this year’s 5-Star Brokerages about their proudest accomplishments of 2023:
Higginbotham: “We celebrated our 75th anniversary by hosting a Volunteer Extravaganza where more than 600 of our people volunteered at nine nonprofits in Fort Worth, TX.”
Virtus: “We achieved $26.5 million in revenue (37 percent year-over-year revenue growth) and ended the year with 115 employees (and growing), $270 million in brokered.”
Western Pacific Insurance Network: “Our production team went beyond the goals set across the board, with 44 percent increased team member production on our renewal book, which would be our top accomplishment of the year.”
CAC Specialty: “The group was presented with numerous difficult risk transfer requests, many of which could not be solved via traditional risk transfer mechanisms. We are extremely proud of our team’s ability to source and structure alternative risk transfer mechanisms.”
American Risk Management Resources Network: “Developing our exclusive wetlands conservation insurance program. This program enabled us to focus more on the conservation of natural resources and help with wetland conservation projects by providing a financial assurance product for the mitigation banks.”
ANCO Insurance: “Staying competitive in a hard P&C market, growing our benefits department, and adding two locations while celebrating 150 years in business.”
Best Insurance Brokerages in the USA | 5-Star Brokerages
Allied Insurance Agency
American Risk Management Resources Network
ANCO Insurance
AssuredPartners
C3 Risk & Insurance Services
CAC Specialty
Compass Marine Programs
Element22 Insurance Services
ePremium Insurance Agency
Higginbotham
Morrison Insurance Services
North FLA Agency
Northwoods Corporation
Virtus
Best Insurance Brokerages in the USA | 5-Star Brokerages – List in Order
1. Higginbotham
2. AssuredPartners
3. C3 Risk & Insurance
4. CAC Specialty
5. ANCO Insurance
6. (tie) American Risk Management Resources Network
6. (tie) Northwoods Corporation
8. ePremium Insurance Agency
9. Allied Insurance Agency
10. Morrison Insurance Services
11. Compass Marine Programs
12. Virtus
13. North FLA Agency
14. Element22 Insurance Services
Insights
As part of our editorial process, Key Media’s researchers interviewed the subject matter expert below for an independent analysis of this report and its findings.
To be considered for IBA’s 5-Star Brokerages, each brokerage was required to provide key details of its business in 2022 and 2023, including revenue, policies written, number of clients, and profit margin. To be eligible, brokerages were required to have three or more brokers and an office in the US. Each brokerage was then ranked according to these eight criteria:
revenue
revenue growth
revenue per broker
number of clients
number of new clients
client growth
policies written
policy growth
As in previous years, each brokerage was required to supply its details for the 2022 and 2023 calendar years. Brokerages were ranked according to each of the above criteria, and all the rankings were then added together.
Akin to a golf score, the brokerages with the lowest overall scores achieved the highest rankings. IBA’s ranking system rewards brokerages based on business per broker rather than a critical mass, which ensures that the very best brokerages are singled out regardless of size.
