Perpetuation platforms are actively shopping in Texas right now. In July 2026, Sequel Insurance Agencies — backed by SIAA and described by Insurance Journal as a perpetuation partner built for entrepreneurial agency owners — closed on a five-location agency spanning Austin and Central Texas, extending its footprint in the region (Insurance Journal). Deals like this are becoming a more familiar fixture of the Texas and Florida markets, and they're worth understanding not as a signal that independent agencies are disappearing, but as one visible edge of a much larger, slower-moving story about ownership transition.
That larger story starts with scale. Public state licensing and carrier-appointment records show Texas still counts 9,100 independent P&C agencies, with consolidation platforms holding just 0.2% of the market — 99.7% remains independently owned. Florida looks similar in direction if not degree: 9,945 independent agencies, with 95.3% still independent and roughly 3.9% under consolidator ownership. Zoom into the metros and the sub-scale layer becomes visible. Austin's 729 agencies carry a median of just six carrier appointments and a 7% single-carrier share; Houston's 2,519 agencies sit at a median of seven appointments with a 7% single-carrier rate. Single-carrier status is a rough proxy for scale and diversification — an agency built around one relationship rather than a broad book — and it marks out a meaningful pool of agencies that are natural candidates for succession conversations, whether that means an internal transition, a merger, or eventually a sale. More detail on both states is available on Pexara's Texas and Florida intelligence pages.
Florida's numbers add a second layer worth watching: continuous new formation alongside that existing base. FL DFS public license data show 2,899 new general-lines agency licenses issued over the trailing 12 months, running at roughly 247 per month in the latest quarter versus 261 a year prior — a formation pace holding roughly steady, not accelerating. Those new entrants tend to start small: the median Florida GL agent carries just seven carrier appointments, and a full quarter of agents sit at three or fewer. Put an aging cohort of established owners next to a steady stream of newly licensed, thin-appointment shops, and the state is effectively refilling its pool of small, carrier-dependent agencies even as bigger ones consolidate or transition. That fragmentation detail is broken out further on Pexara's Florida consolidation page.
Advisors who work succession deals day to day say the real risk isn't the market backdrop — it's timing. Succession consultant Alex Wong of Smythe LLP tells owners to begin planning two to three years ahead of any anticipated transition, noting that owners who wait until the last minute frequently end up selling to a consolidator by default, even when an internal sale to family, management, or employees was their actual preference (Insurance Business America). Insurance Journal M&A columnist Catherine Oak points to a related trap: owners walking into deal talks anchored to commission multiples of 2.5x to 3.5x that they've heard secondhand, without the 15-20% profit margins that would actually support pricing at that level (Insurance Journal).
A companion piece from Oak and Bill Schoeffler names the fix that matters most for long-tenured owners: shrinking the gap between the agency and the individual running it. When client relationships, carrier access, and institutional knowledge sit mostly with the owner, a prospective buyer sees transition risk rather than a transferable business (Insurance Journal). For agencies in the sub-scale, single-carrier segment that public records identify across Texas and Florida metros, that's the practical starting point — not a forced decision to sell, but the operational groundwork that keeps every future option, from staying independent to structuring an internal transition, genuinely open. The full landscape view is at Pexara's insurance intelligence hub.