Every insurance agency leaves a paper trail with its state regulator: the agency license itself, and behind it each carrier appointment — a formal, regulated relationship filed with the state. Read in the aggregate, those public records map how a market is actually structured: how many carriers the typical shop can access, how many operate on a single carrier, and where fragmentation is thickest. For an owner, that structure quietly shapes enterprise value, because carrier access and independence are the assets an agency runs on.
Texas licensing and carrier-appointment registries held by the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) list 9,100 independent P&C agencies, with 99.7% of the market still independent and just 0.2% owned by consolidation platforms (records retrieved 2026-07-02). By metro: Dallas–Fort Worth 2,788 agencies with a median of 8 carrier appointments and 6% single-carrier; Houston 2,519 at 7 and 7%; Austin 729 at 6 and 7%; San Antonio 655 at 9 and 6%.
Florida's public license and appointment records from the Florida Department of Financial Services show 9,945 independent P&C agencies — 95.3% independent and 3.9% owned by consolidation platforms (retrieved 2026-07-02). Its metros run denser on carrier access: Miami 2,518 agencies at a median of 15 appointments (6% single-carrier), Tampa 1,440 at 12 (5%), Orlando 1,181 at 14 (7%), Jacksonville 523 at 15 (3%).
Two signals matter here. The single-carrier share is the portion of appointed agencies holding just one carrier appointment — a sub-scale, carrier-dependency flag. A shop with one appointment lives or dies by a single relationship, its book exposed to that carrier's appetite and pricing. Median appointments measure the typical agency's carrier access. Across Florida's big metros, medians of 12 to 15 sit well above Texas's 6 to 9, so the typical Florida agency holds a more diversified carrier shelf, while single-carrier exposure stays in the low single digits in both states.
The Florida regulator's ledger, as of 2026-08-13, shows 50,453 active resident General Lines (2-20 P&C) agents statewide and 2,823 new agency licenses issued in the trailing 12 months. That figure is gross formation — roughly steady at 242 new agency licenses a month in the latest full quarter versus 251 a month a year earlier — and it does not net out closures, which these records do not capture. In the last 90 days, another 1,157 new P&C General Lines agent licenses were issued.
Carrier access per active General Lines agent skews wide: a median of 7 distinct carriers, a 25th percentile of 3, and a 75th percentile of 17 (n=37,612). The 3-to-17 gap between the bottom and top quartile is a clean proxy for how unevenly access is distributed among individual producers.
Fragmentation shows most clearly at the county level, where a lower agents-per-agency ratio means more sub-scale shops. The fastest-forming counties over the trailing 12 months: Dade added 627 new agencies (1.3 agents per agency), Broward 504 (1.2), Palm Beach 278 (1.4), Orange 242 (1.4), and Hillsborough 202 (2.4).
The carriers opening the most new Florida appointments in the last 90 days — Frontline Insurance Reciprocal Exchange, Progressive American Insurance Company, and Progressive Express Insurance Company — point to where current carrier appetite sits. Appointment counts measure carrier-agent relationships, not premium written, so this is a read on distribution strategy rather than volume.
For an owner, the same filings that keep you compliant double as a map of your market — and of your own position within it. A diversified appointment shelf and a non-single-carrier profile are structural assets; heavy concentration in one carrier is a dependency the ledger exposes. The full Florida fragmentation and roll-up picture is available at the Pexara insurance intelligence page.