Headlines about insurance agency M&A this year read like a slowdown story. OPTIS Partners counted 292 agency transactions nationally in the first half of 2026, a 15% drop from the same stretch last year and, per OPTIS, the softest H1 tally since 2016, as reported by Insurance Journal. Ten buyers accounted for 45% of that activity, with Broadstreet Partners closing 37 deals and Inzone Insurance Services close behind at 33. Of the 68 distinct buyers in the market, 37 were private equity firms, and six were writing their first agency-acquisition check ever — new capital is still circling even as overall pace eases. P&C agencies made up the bulk of what changed hands, representing 198 of the 292 deals, or roughly two-thirds.
Zoom out to full-year 2025 and the picture is similar: 695 deals, down 12% from 2024, continuing a multi-year drift lower, per Insurance Journal's reporting on OPTIS data. Yet MarshBerry's own year-end review still ranked 2025 as the third-busiest M&A year on record for brokerages — a reminder that 'slowing' and 'quiet' are not the same thing. OPTIS managing partner Tim Cunningham frames the bigger picture bluntly: with an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 independent agencies still operating nationally, he expects a majority of the smallest ones will eventually change hands, deal-cycle timing aside.
So what does that mean if you own a P&C agency in Texas or Florida right now? Less than the national headlines suggest. State licensing and carrier-appointment records show Texas still counts about 9,100 independent P&C agencies, with 99.7% of that market independently owned — consolidation platforms hold barely a toehold at 0.2%. Florida looks more consolidated by comparison, with 9,945 agencies and 95.3% independent ownership, meaning roughly 3.9% sits with roll-up platforms. Even in Florida, the more 'consolidated' of the two states, independents still make up the overwhelming majority of the channel.
What separates a resilient shop from a sub-scale one isn't ownership structure — it's carrier access. Public records put single-carrier dependency, a marker of thin market leverage, at just 3% in Jacksonville and 5-6% in Miami and Tampa, all Florida metros with double-digit median carrier appointments (12 to 15 per agency). Texas metros, despite far lower consolidation overall, actually run hotter on this measure: Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio all cluster at 6-7% single-carrier dependency, with median appointment counts of 6 to 9. In other words, a Texas agency owner in a market with almost no roll-up presence can still be more carrier-constrained than a Florida peer operating inside a more consolidated metro. Ownership share tells you who else is buying; carrier depth tells you how much negotiating room your own book actually has.
Florida's underlying agent population adds context. State DFS filings show 50,325 active resident General Lines agents statewide, with 2,899 new agency licenses issued over the trailing 12 months — formation running close to flat versus a year earlier. Carrier access per agent sits at a median of 7 appointments, with the bottom quartile holding just 3. County-level fragmentation is sharpest in South Florida: Dade and Broward are each producing hundreds of new agent licenses annually against agent-per-agency ratios near 1.2 to 1.3, signaling a landscape still being formed by very small shops rather than platforms buying up scale. Frontline Insurance Reciprocal Exchange and Progressive's two Florida entities were the most active in opening new agent appointments over the last 90 days, per DFS appointment data.
For an agency owner, the practical takeaway isn't 'am I a target' — it's 'how thin is my carrier bench relative to peers in my metro.' National deal counts move on private-equity capital cycles; carrier-appointment depth moves on relationships an owner can actually build. Full county-by-county detail on Florida's fragmentation runway is available at /intelligence/insurance/florida/consolidation.