America’s Fastest-Growing Insurance Companies |
Fast Brokerages

To understand what 15 percent revenue growth means in today’s environment, it helps to consider what Catherine Oak, founder of Oak & Associates, a leading insurance brokerage consultancy, says that firms exceeding this level are pushing the envelope. She says, “It really signals a firm is finding new business, not just riding the market.”

Oak’s observation has statistical backing from the broader industry. The Big “I” Best Practices Study – the most widely cited benchmark for independent agency performance – found that the average organic growth rate for participating agencies in 2025 was 9.4 percent, with even the best-performing size band, firms with revenues of $5–$10 million, reaching only 11.3 percent. Seven of the 2026 IBA Fast Brokerages grew by more than 20 percent, meaning their expansion cannot be explained away by favorable pricing conditions. Hirschfeld & Associates grew 78.6 percent; Union Risk Services, 59.5 percent; and ALKEME Insurance, 36.2 percent.

The Big “I” study also noted that the “P&C rate cooled materially versus the prior year,” signaling that the conditions that had made double-digit growth easier in 2023 and 2024 were beginning to normalize. Growing faster than the market as a whole, at a moment when rate tailwinds were softening, makes the 2026 cohort’s performance more significant, not less.

Oak is direct about what separates firms that consistently exceed 20 percent from those that plateau near the qualifying threshold. “They are continually finding ways to grow with new business. They are usually niche in certain industries as experts, and that makes it easier to grow. They also help their producers more, through coaching, buying leads, and training.”

The most consistent theme across 2026’s Fast Brokerages is vertical focus. Whether the specialty was captive insurance, commercial auto transportation, real estate, middle-market property and casualty, or construction, the firms that grew fastest were those that had stopped trying to be everything to everyone.

ALKEME Insurance, which grew 36.2 percent to reach $252 million in revenue, is among the most aggressive practitioners of this approach. The Ladera Ranch, California-based firm, which completed more than 30 strategic acquisitions to build a network of more than 1,500 employees across 90 locations, describes its strategy as “accelerating organic growth across our partner platform through proprietary technology, producer enablement, and cross-selling expansion within specialty industry verticals,” including automotive, construction, real estate, transportation, security, and healthcare.

At the opposite end of the size scale, 925 Partners of Jacksonville, Florida – which surpassed the $5 million revenue milestone in 2025, posting 27.6 percent growth – credits a similarly disciplined approach. “We focus on specialization and accountability,” says Blake Rhodes, CEO. “Rather than pursuing broad growth, we invest in defined verticals and build strong carrier partnerships to support them.” The firm’s Transportation Division, focused on a defined trucking niche, was its fastest-growing segment.

Union Risk Services, the 26-month-old New Jersey brokerage that posted 59.5 percent growth, has built its entire identity around captive insurance – alternative risk financing structures that allow businesses to take greater control of their insurance costs. The firm now manages more than 30 captive programs representing over $65 million in captive premium, serving clients from middle-market businesses to large national enterprises across construction, transportation, trucking, sanitation, real estate, and private equity.

For Andrew Adams, president of River Valley Underwriters – the Arkansas-based managing general agent that grew 15.2 percent in 2025 and recently crossed $70 million in written premium across nine offices in nine states – the foundation of growth is straightforward, if rarely simple to execute.
 

“It’s got to come down to the people. At the end of the day, we’re a service-based organization. If the agents don’t enjoy doing business with you, if it takes them two weeks to get something that should take a day, then it’s not really beneficial”
Andrew AdamsRiver Valley Underwriters

Adams started River Valley in 2018, drawing on the experience of his family’s previous firm, MJ Kelly Company, which his grandfather, father, and uncle had built and sold in 2016. The advantage, he says, is institutional memory: knowing that the relationship between an MGA and its retail agents depends on something as simple as answering the phone.

River Valley’s approach to talent is notably patient. Adams described a three-year development track for new underwriters – many of whom arrive with no insurance background at all, some recruited from the restaurant and hospitality industry for their customer-service instincts. “You get a lot of really good talent out of doing it that way,” he says. “They want to perform well, and there’s a buy-in that comes with the time and energy you spend with them.”

Higginbotham, which reached the $1 billion milestone for the first time in its 77-year history, frames talent investment in similar terms. The Fort Worth firm’s Five-Star Recruiting Program, designed to attract high-performing experienced producers with established books of business and specialty expertise, was a central driver of its 15.1 percent growth to $1.045 billion.

IMA Financial Group, the Denver-based employee-owned brokerage that grew 16.3 percent to $955.3 million, takes the employee ownership model a step further, running a 501(c)(3) foundation that contributed more than $1.3 million in grants and 13,100 volunteer hours in 2024.

Brian Payne, president of Field Insurance Agency of Surfside, a 58-year-old independent agency based in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, that grew 17.8 percent to $8.6 million in 2025, distills the service dimension to a single standard.
 

“We strive for same-day service. While this always varies based on requests, our team strives to deliver quick response times – this helps increase client satisfaction overall, achieving positive client experiences”
Brian PayneField Insurance Agency of Surfside

Payne attributes Field’s growth to a combination of dedicated servicing roles, large-scale advertising across digital, radio, television, and direct-to-consumer channels, and a focused engagement with the booming homeowner market in South Carolina’s coastal communities. “Building the brand and consumer recognition has played a vital role in our growth,” he says.

That community-first approach extends beyond advertising into what Payne describes as deliberate local presence. “We have stayed consistent on engaging with the community and staying relevant with consumers through sponsorship opportunities on the local and regional level,” he says. In an era when large national carriers and aggregator platforms compete on price alone, that embedded local identity – built through sponsorships, familiar faces, and genuine neighborhood ties – is something a direct-to-consumer digital platform cannot easily replicate.

Oak underlines the point from a strategic perspective: “Customers want to know that their questions will be answered when they need them to be. They also want an agent that looks out for them – regarding rate increases, claims, and ways they could do loss prevention items that may bring down future costs.” In a market where capacity has tightened in catastrophe-exposed states and some insurers have stopped writing new personal lines business altogether, that proactive advisory role has become a genuine differentiator.

Ask the leaders of the 2026 Fast Brokerages about artificial intelligence, and you get a consistent answer: cautious optimism. That instinct, it turns out, is broadly representative of the industry at large – even as the headline adoption statistics have shifted dramatically.

According to Conning’s 2025 annual AI survey, the percentage of insurers that have fully adopted AI into their value chain jumped from 8 percent in 2024 to 34 percent in 2025 – a near fourfold increase in a single year. Large language model adoption leapt from 18 percent to 63 percent over the same period. Yet a separate survey from Roots found that only 22 percent of firms have AI solutions actually running in production. The gap between stated adoption and operational deployment is wide.

Adams of River Valley Underwriters captures the prevailing mood among Fast Brokerage leaders. “I’m somewhere in the middle,” he says. “I’m not a true believer that I think AI is in its final form and it’s going to revolutionize the world overnight. But I’m not one of these people who says it’s nothing, either.” His specific concern is data privacy – the opacity of how client and policy information is stored once it enters an AI system – a worry that is particularly acute in the insurance sector, where state regulators are increasingly focused on consumer data protection.

Payne of Field Insurance Agency of Surfside echoes the functional rather than philosophical approach. “AI at the carrier level has contributed greatly with speed,” he says. “Many companies share data and have insight, which ultimately enables our team to work efficiently, which increases our response speed on daily tasks.” The technology, in other words, is most valuable when it is embedded in existing workflows rather than deployed as a standalone initiative.

The firms that have gone furthest with AI are those with the data infrastructure to support it. IMA Financial Group has advanced from early AI experimentation to enterprise-wide deployment, using Microsoft’s platform to deploy AI agents within existing systems. The firm’s AI-assisted policy and quote comparison process now takes roughly one-third of its previous time. ALKEME has established a dedicated internal AI and automation function that builds tools for marketing content generation, campaign deployment, and lead-nurture sequences. Across America Insurance Services, the Riverside, California, commercial auto MGA that grew 25 percent, uses AI models to review fleet accounts that previously required days of manual analysis in under 15 minutes.

Oak, who has advised independent brokerages on growth and valuation for decades, is measured in her assessment. “If policy information is more automated, service is improved,” she says. “Regarding AI, it may be that there is some problem-solving AI may know how to handle.” It is a characteristically unsentimental take, but one that aligns closely with where the most successful firms on this list actually are in their adoption journey.

The 2026 Fast Brokerages are competing and winning inside one of the most consolidation-heavy sectors in American business. Since 2008, more than 10,000 M&A transactions have been completed in the US insurance agency and brokerage sector, according to Business Insurance, averaging 557 deals per year involving nearly 1,300 unique buyers.

But the pace of consolidation is itself consolidating. The number of unique acquirers fell from 104 in 2024 to just 95 in 2025, according to OPTIS Partners, continuing a four-year downward trajectory. Private equity-backed buyers, which accounted for 73 percent of all 2025 transactions, completed 11 percent fewer deals than the year before. The buyer pool is shrinking even as the targets remain abundant – OPTIS estimates there are around 30,000 independent agencies with revenues below $1.25 million, the vast majority without succession plans.

Against this backdrop, the strategies pursued by the 2026 Fast Brokerages – whether acquisition-led, organically driven, or some combination – stand out for their intentionality.

Several of the largest winners on the list have used acquisition as a primary growth lever. ALKEME’s 30-plus acquisitions in the past 18 months drove its expansion to $252 million. Sunstar Insurance Group, the Memphis, Tennessee brokerage that grew 16.5 percent to $169.8 million, completed six acquisitions during the period, with commercial lines as the primary driver. IMA Financial Group, which grew 16.3 percent to $955.3 million, announced a partnership with The Richards Group, adding 160 professionals and approximately 28,000 new clients across Vermont and New Hampshire, and expanded into Alabama through a partnership with Valent Group.

The Liberty Company Insurance Brokers, the Gainesville, Florida brokerage that grew 16.3 percent to $222.4 million, completed 12 partnerships and acquisitions in 2025 to bring its total to more than 50 transactions since 2019. “These were not volume-driven rollups,” the firm noted in its submission. “Each transaction aligned with Liberty’s operating model, leadership philosophy, and long-term profitability goals.” Specialty practices now account for 11 percent of total revenue.

Adams of River Valley Underwriters offers a counterpoint from the perspective of a privately owned, family-held firm. Over eight years, acquisitions have accounted for roughly 15 to 20 percent of total growth. “We’re not one of those people that’s out there trying to buy up everything and anything,” he says. “It really needs to make sense, and it needs to fit with the culture that we have.” The acquisitions River Valley has done, he says, have consistently grown beyond their previous performance within one or two years of ownership.

For the firms that have grown primarily through organic means, the recipe is more labor-intensive but, the data suggests, no less effective. Capstone Group of Lower Gwynedd, Pennsylvania, achieved nearly 30 percent organic growth in 2025, growing from $6.7 million to $8.8 million in revenue. This is credited to the firm’s focus on middle and large-market property and casualty accounts, combined with a proprietary RiskMap process that evaluates existing policies for coverage gaps and cost reduction opportunities.

Virtus, the nine-time Best Places to Work in Insurance award-winner based in Overland Park, Kansas, grew 16.7 percent to $28 million on the strength of a specialized vertical model that generated an average of $700,000 in new business per production team member in 2025. Its real estate vertical, led by a single producer who generated $2 million in new-logo wins, was the standout performer.

C3 Risk & Insurance of San Diego grew 27.8 percent to $33.9 million while simultaneously improving EBITDA, a combination the firm attributes to a performance-driven sales culture and the appointment of a president of its employee benefits division, which enabled cross-selling across business units and access to larger, more complex clients.

The firms on the 2026 Fast Brokerages list have grown despite, and in some cases because of, conditions that made growth harder for others.

Oak identifies carrier behavior as the primary structural headwind. “The main challenges are that some insurance companies are not accepting new business, especially for personal lines in some states where there have been fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other acts of nature,” she says. “Some of these companies are re-underwriting their books of business to get off of accounts in commercial lines as well, where there have been losses.” The Big “I” Best Practices Study corroborated this at the market level, noting a “slowdown in commercial lines” as the primary drag on agency growth in 2025, even as personal lines and group benefits accelerated.

Across America Insurance Services, which specializes in commercial auto and transportation – a sector with notoriously volatile loss experience – has built its 25 percent growth on a model that explicitly prioritizes underwriting discipline over premium volume. They are highly selective in the risks they write and prioritize long-term profitability over short-term premium growth. The firm has maintained loss ratios materially below broader commercial auto market averages.

Presley Insurance Group of Dallas, which grew 16.7 percent from $1.8 million to $2.1 million in revenue, reflects the challenges facing smaller agencies navigating the hard market. There was a deliberate pivot away from a sales-first model toward more standardized processes for service and renewals. The firm’s book has grown from $8 million three years ago to $22 million at the end of 2025, a trajectory that suggests the pivot is working.

The ambitions of the 2026 Fast Brokerages are as varied as their strategies. River Valley Underwriters plans to pass $100 million in gross written premiums before the end of 2027. Virtus has a financial plan to exceed $40 million in gross sales by 2028. Union Risk Services is planning offices in Scottsdale, Arizona, and West Palm Beach, Florida, targeting states where business migration and demand for alternative risk financing are driving growth.

The broader consolidation environment is likely to shape the landscape these firms compete in. OPTIS Partners expects “more large deals and recapitalizations in 2026 as the chase for scale continues.” The Deloitte 2026 Insurance M&A Outlook warned that softening P&C market conditions and rising operational demands – particularly around governance, data, and capital management – could drive a new wave of consolidation driven by resilience rather than pure growth ambition. For independent, privately held firms like River Valley Underwriters, navigating that environment while preserving their culture requires deliberate choices.

Adams of River Valley Underwriters is unambiguous about both the goal and the risk of complacency. “By the end of this year, we’ll be firm $80 million-plus in gross written premium. The goal is to get to $100 million to start with, and then you’ve got to reset your goals.” He adds, “You can’t get complacent. You’ve got to continue to find ways to grow in this business.”

Oak, watching the industry from the advisory perspective, frames the challenge in terms that apply equally to firms at every scale on this list. The brokerages that will sustain their growth, she argues, are those that combine genuine new business development with deep sector expertise and proactive client service. The ones that plateau are those relying on rate to do the work that strategy should be doing.

The 2026 Fast Brokerages have demonstrated that the distinction is real and that it matters. In a market worth $140 billion and forecast to reach nearly $172 billion by 2030, the fastest-growing insurance companies in the US are those that have found a way to make growth structural rather than circumstantial.

America’s Fastest-Growing Insurance Companies | Fast Brokerages

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  River Valley Underwriters
   
  
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  Field Insurance Agency
   
  
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  Union Risk Services
   
  

• 925 Partners
• Across America Insurance Services
• ALKEME Insurance
• C3 Risk & Insurance Services
• Capstone Group
• Higginbotham
• Hirschfeld & Associates
• IMA Financial Group
• Presley Insurance Group
• Sunstar Insurance Group
• The Liberty Company Insurance Brokers
• Virtus