If you own an independent P&C agency in Texas or Florida, the headline M&A numbers this year might sound like the roll-up wave is finally hitting your street. It isn't — at least not the way the national deal tally suggests.
According to OPTIS Partners data reported by Insurance Journal, U.S. and Canada agency M&A activity fell 15% in the first half of 2026 to 292 transactions, the slowest first-half pace since 2016, with second-quarter deal count down 25% year over year to 138. Property/casualty agencies made up 68% of first-half sell-side deals — 198 transactions — so this is a P&C story, not a life-and-health footnote.
But deal counts describe activity, not ownership structure. And on ownership, the picture in Texas and Florida looks nothing like a market being bought up wholesale. State licensing and carrier-appointment public records show Texas has 9,100 independent P&C agencies, with 99.7% still independently owned and just 0.2% under consolidation-platform ownership. Florida has 9,945 independent agencies, 95.3% independently owned, with 3.9% under platform ownership. Even in Florida — the more consolidated of the two states by this measure — independent ownership is still the overwhelming norm.
That matters because it reframes the question most agency owners should be asking. It isn't "when will a buyer show up in my county," it's "what actually separates a valuable book from a sub-scale one in a market this fragmented." Increasingly, the answer is carrier access.
Across Florida metros, carrier-appointment breadth varies widely: Miami agencies carry a median of 15 carrier appointments, Jacksonville also 15, Tampa 12, Orlando 14 — all comfortably diversified by public-records counts. Texas metros run leaner but still healthy: Dallas–Fort Worth and Houston sit at 8 and 7 median appointments, Austin at 6, San Antonio at 9. Single-carrier dependency, a classic sub-scale signal, stays in the mid-single digits to low teens across nearly every metro in both states.
Where the fragmentation gets sharper is in Florida's fastest-forming counties. Dade added 668 new P&C agent licenses in the trailing 12 months against just 1.3 agents per agency — the thinnest ratio among the state's fast-growing counties, per FL DFS/CFO public license and appointment data. Broward isn't far behind at 526 new licenses and 1.2 agents per agency. These aren't necessarily weak books; they're a lot of small, often single-producer operations forming quickly in high-demand coastal markets. That's a structural signal worth an owner's attention, not because a buyout is imminent, but because a one-person or two-person shop with narrow carrier appointments is inherently more exposed to a single carrier's underwriting appetite or rate action than a diversified peer down the street.
On valuation, advisory data cited in CT Acquisitions' 2026 M&A Multiples Report shows agencies under $2M in commission revenue transacting around 1.5x to 2.5x commission revenue through 2024–Q2 2026, per Reagan Consulting's Broker Compensation Study and OPTIS Partners' quarterly tracking. Lower middle market agencies between $2M and $10M in revenue ran closer to 7x-9x adjusted EBITDA, citing MarshBerry's Broker Tech & M&A quarterly alongside OPTIS Partners. PE-backed platforms above $50M in revenue transacted meaningfully higher, around 12x-16x adjusted EBITDA on primary deals based on publicly disclosed transactions. Reagan Consulting has separately cautioned agencies against leaning on outdated flat-revenue-multiple rules of thumb, noting they can understate or misstate what actually drives value.
OPTIS partner Steve Germundson told Insurance Journal that buying activity has picked up among emerging private equity firms and sponsors anticipating their own eventual recapitalization or sale — a reminder that even amid a slower national deal count, buyer intensity hasn't disappeared, it's concentrated. Ten firms accounted for 45% of first-half deals, led by Broadstreet Partners with 37 transactions and Inzone Insurance Services with 33, out of 68 total buyers, 37 of them private equity.
For Texas and Florida agency owners, the practical read isn't defensive. It's that carrier diversification, appointment depth, and producer capacity are the levers that show up in valuation conversations — regardless of whether consolidation ever reaches your specific market. County-level detail on Florida's fastest-forming markets is available at Pexara's Florida county intelligence.