Independent agency owners watching the M&A headlines could be forgiven for assuming valuations are sliding along with deal counts. They aren't — at least not for agencies that can prove they're well run.
Start with the deal count. OPTIS Partners, cited by Insurance Business America, tracked 292 North American agency acquisitions in the first half of 2026, a 15% drop from 342 a year earlier and the softest first-half tally in seven years. The trailing twelve-month total of 646 deals is the weakest since early 2019. It's also not a one-quarter blip: 2025 closed with 695 total deals, down 12% from 787 in 2024, the third straight year without the usual scramble to close before year-end. Property and casualty agencies still made up the bulk of what did trade — 198 of the 292 H1 2026 deals, or roughly two-thirds of volume, per the same report.
What hasn't followed deal volume down is price. Insurance Journal's review of 2025 pricing found the average EBITDA multiple for midmarket agencies — those generating $1 million to $10 million in EBITDA — opened the year at 11.9x and finished at 11.4x, a modest give-back rather than a collapse. Compare that to what happened at the top of the market: large brokerage deals north of $250 million in EBITDA had been expected to command 17-19x in 2024, but AssuredPartners, with roughly $1 billion in EBITDA, priced closer to 14.5x in its acquisition by Gallagher, and Risk Strategies, at about $600 million in EBITDA, landed near 16.0x in its deal with Brown & Brown. The clearest read on why: Brown & Brown's own public trading multiple fell from 17.8x to 12.9x over 2025, a decline Insurance Journal tied directly to organic growth cooling from 10.0% in the second quarter of 2024 to 3.6% a year later. Growth, not just size, is what buyers are underwriting now.
Heading into 2026, OPTIS Partners managing partner Tim Cunningham told Insurance Business America that pricing for what he called 'the better sellers' should hold at current elevated levels barring a major shift in the economy or insurance marketplace. The reason those levels are holding at all, according to Insurance Journal, comes down to sheer buyer supply: for every agency that reaches the market, on the order of 50 PE-backed or public brokers are positioned to bid. That competitive backstop is propping up pricing even as fewer sellers show up to test it.
For an independent agency owner, the practical takeaway is that scarcity alone no longer does the pricing work it used to. A buyer pool this deep will still pay up — but increasingly for retention, organic growth, and diversified revenue rather than for simply being available. That distinction matters most in markets where a lot of new, small shops are forming. Public state licensing and carrier-appointment records show Florida issued 2,899 new agency licenses in the trailing twelve months, with formation concentrated in Dade and Broward counties, where the typical agency runs closer to 1.2-1.3 agents per shop — a fragmentation signal, not a revenue one. Carrier access tells a similar story: the median Florida agent holds appointments with 7 carriers, but a quarter of agents sit at 3 or fewer, a proxy for the kind of single-carrier dependency that buyers now discount rather than reward.
Texas shows a parallel pattern at the metro level, with median carrier-appointment counts and single-carrier shares varying meaningfully across Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio — detail worth reviewing for owners benchmarking their own carrier diversification against local peers at Pexara's Texas market page or the broader Florida consolidation view.
None of this is a signal to sell. It's a signal about what's being priced: in a slower deal market, the agencies commanding full multiples are the ones that can document growth and retention on paper, not just show up as a listing.