A year ago, Marsh set out to save US$400 million a year. On Thursday, it decided that was not enough.
Marsh raised the annualised savings target for its positively named Thrive, its three-year efficiency and growth programme, to about US$600 million. Chief executive John Doyle told analysts on the company’s third-quarter earnings call that the extra headroom came from the firm’s shared-services unit and from advances in technology. The announcement came alongside results showing revenue up 8% to US$6.9 billion.
The cost of saving so much in costs has grown too. When Thrive was unveiled in October 2025, Marsh put the cost of achieving the savings at around US$500 million. Marsh now expects costs of roughly US$750 million, according to its quarterly filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Chief financial officer Mark McGivney said most of the actions will be taken by the end of 2028, with savings landing fairly evenly over the programme’s three years. The filing shows Marsh has booked US$310 million of Thrive costs since launch, primarily severance, including US$71 million in the third quarter.
McGivney said most of the savings so far have come from three places: simplifying the organisation, “right-shoring” work to lower-cost locations, and efficiencies inside Business and Client Services (BCS). BCS is the technology, data and operations unit Marsh announced in October 2025.
Doyle said BCS is building shared services for client onboarding, data ingestion and commercial enablement. It is also redesigning processes and moving work to the firm’s capability centres. Marsh did not say which locations are taking the work, a detail that matters to service hubs across Asia. The unit is led by Paul Beswick.
AI is a growing part of the picture. Doyle said Marsh has built its own internal AI model and rolls out new tools to staff every week. He singled out Broker Workbench, which launched in the third quarter for the firm’s UK wholesale business. Some 93% of Marsh’s London wholesale trading is now digital, he said, and placements that took two to four weeks now take a couple of hours.
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The question hanging over any programme of this size is jobs. Marsh has not put a number on it. But Doyle offered the clearest description yet of how the workforce is changing.
“We’ve begun to harvest some attrition really in our mid and back office,” Doyle said, linking it to process improvements and automation. In other words, some roles are not being refilled when people leave. At the same time, the firm is hiring producers and consultants in its fastest-growing areas, and is recruiting early-career staff at the same pace as before. Doyle said Marsh is adding to its client-facing talent both through lateral hires and through junior recruitment.
His message to employees is to “be good users of AI and you’re going to become more valuable to us, more valuable to our clients.”
Marsh is not alone in rethinking how many people it needs. In May, Acrisure said it would cut 2,250 jobs, about 11% of its global workforce, citing AI and automation. Its CEO, Greg Williams, told staff that “technology, AI, and digital platforms are fundamentally changing how businesses operate.” Marsh’s approach so far appears to be a longer term process: attrition and offshoring rather than a single announced cut.
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Doyle framed Thrive as a way to fund growth, not just to fatten margins. He said the extra savings will create room to invest in sales, new capabilities, the brand and technology. Margin expansion, he told one analyst, is “an outcome of the way we run the business. It’s not really a primary KPI for us.”
The numbers suggest investors will be watching that balance closely. Marsh’s adjusted operating margin was 22.7% in the third quarter, and Doyle acknowledged margins were flat in the period. The company still expects full-year margin expansion.
Analysts pushed on whether a larger efficiency programme could follow in 2027 or 2028. Doyle declined to speak to 2027 before January, saying it was still early and the tools were changing fast.
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For brokers competing with Marsh, the bigger story may be scale. Doyle argued that deep client relationships, proprietary data and the money to invest in technology give large firms an edge. He suggested smaller and private equity-backed rivals will find it hard to match the pace, and that this could feed future acquisitions.
The regional numbers show why the pressure is on. Marsh Risk’s underlying revenue in Asia Pacific grew 4% in the quarter, behind the 7% it reported in EMEA, while the firm’s Global Insurance Market Index showed commercial rates in Asia falling by a mid-single-digit percentage.
Not everyone sees AI as a threat to intermediaries. Analysts have said that personal lines and small commercial are the segments most exposed to automation, and they make up a small share of revenue at most large brokers.
For mid-market brokers, the near-term change is more likely to show up in how their service teams are built than in whether their jobs exist.
Insurance Business reached out to Marsh for comment, but it declined to comment further.
