The best insurance networks and alliances in the USA are no longer the ones with the deepest carrier lists or the richest commission splits; they’re the ones agents say make their day-to-day work easier. Insurance agents nationwide are telling their networks the same thing: carrier access and commissions no longer decide who wins their loyalty. 

In Insurance Business America’s 5-Star Networks and Alliances 2026 survey, agents rated their network or alliance on 10 criteria, from commissions and marketing support to technology and perpetuation planning, on a scale of one to five. Networks and alliances that averaged four or better in at least one category earned a 5-Star designation; those averaging five or better across every category earned All-Star status.

The results point to a shift already underway. Artificial intelligence tools now handle much of the back-office work – quoting, policy comparison, and administrative tasks – that once made going independent a heavy lift for an agent leaving a captive shop or a larger firm. 

Two-thirds of independent agencies plan to increase their AI use over the next 12 months, according to the Big “I” Agents Council for Technology, a shift explored further in our recent coverage of independent agents stuck in AI pilot mode. That should, in theory, make networks less necessary. 

Instead, agents surveyed this year say the opposite is happening: the networks winning loyalty are the ones proving they can do more than aggregate premium, delivering curated technology, hands-on consultation, and training that a solo agent, even one armed with AI, cannot easily replicate alone.

In 2026, the best insurance networks and alliances in the USA are distinguishing themselves less through raw carrier access and more through structured technology, training, and hands-on consultation. For years, network membership pitches centered on two things: how many carriers an agent could access and how much commission they’d keep. That calculus is changing. 

Commissions and profit sharing remain the most commonly cited reason agents join a network, picked as a top three benefit by 89 percent of members surveyed this year, although insurance alliance commission splits vary widely from one network to the next – from Smart Choice’s 70/30 arrangement that converts to 100 percent at $67,000 in rolling commissions, to more consultative models like Strategic Agency Partners that de-emphasize profit-sharing altogether. But conversations with 2026’s award-winning networks suggest the real battleground has moved to what happens after that initial signing: training, technology, and ongoing business consultation.

Summer Cole, CIC, assistant vice president at Big “I” Alliance Gold, put it directly: “A 5-Star Network in 2026 is defined by its ability to help agencies grow and operate smarter through technology, data, and shared expertise, not simply by what it can negotiate on an agent’s behalf.” Cole says the best networks function as an unbiased extension of the agency, delivering operational efficiencies and insight an individual agency could not easily develop on its own.

That shift matters more now because the barrier to running an independent agency has dropped. The technology council of Big “I” reports that two-thirds of independent agencies plan to expand their AI use this year, much of it aimed at the quoting, policy comparison, and client administration work that used to require a larger staff – a trend also covered in our analysis of agentic AI’s impact on brokers. As that changes what agents need help with day to day, the networks proving their worth are those layering in AI tools, consultative advice, and structured training that a solo operation would struggle to build alone.

Renaissance’s edge in 2026 comes down to one thing: AI tools built specifically for its member agencies, not for the network itself. Renaissance has spent close to a decade building its identity around one idea: technology built specifically for its member agencies, not for Renaissance itself. 

“We have in the network space been extraordinarily pioneering throughout our entire journey,” says CEO Bob Bondi, describing the past 12 to 18 months as a period in which “the advent of AI and some of the tool sets that are available for us to bring more value to our customers” accelerated everything the network does. 

Renaissance was conceived eight to nine years ago with technology as its centerpiece, a deliberate departure from networks built primarily around market access and enhanced compensation, and Bondi says that early bet now gives Renaissance an edge few competitors can match – a claim reflecting his own view of the network’s position rather than an independently verified ranking. Where a rival network might need to buy a third-party AI product or start a lengthy build from scratch, Renaissance’s infrastructure was already in place.

That philosophy shapes how Renaissance builds its technology. “The AI tools the network has introduced are not necessarily tools designed to make us more efficient. They’re designed to make our agent members more efficient and effective,” Bondi says.

One example he points to is coverage comparison, a task that involves checking one quote against another, or a quote against an existing policy. “We’ve built several tools that allow our members to actually do what used to take hours of their day,” Bondi says. “Now they can do it in minutes.” Accuracy matters as much as speed here, Bondi notes, since an error in a coverage-comparison tool carries real professional and liability consequences for the agencies using it.
 

 

New tools go through a beta program with a subset of member agencies before wider release, with member feedback actively shaping the finished product rather than treated as an afterthought. Renaissance tracks tool adoption rates as a direct signal of whether it is delivering real value: a tool with low uptake gets reworked or retired rather than propped up.

Bondi frames this as a broader organizational discipline, arguing that what worked five years ago may no longer fit today’s market, which requires the network to stay nimble rather than lock into a fixed program. The team also invests heavily in interface design, aiming for tools that feel intuitive enough that onboarding functions more as orientation than formal training. 

Looking ahead, Bondi says Renaissance is focused on expanding into US regions where it currently has no presence, and on developing proprietary insurance products accessible only through the network, which would require new partnerships across the wider insurance ecosystem to deliver. 

He is also careful to push back on the idea that all independent agencies have the same needs: Renaissance’s membership spans agencies from $5 million to $40 million in premium, and Bondi says the network’s goal is to scale its tools and services, so they stay relevant as a member agency grows in size and complexity.

A: Three years ago, a prospect may have been interested in our technology, but they were interested in a lot of other things as well. In the conversation with prospects today, it’s all about AI capability.

A: Our members are independent agencies, which means we support those who are very small, all the way up to those who are very, very large. People looking at networks from the outside have a tendency to kind of put all of the agencies into one basket. [But] the needs of the agent are different along that spectrum.

Smart Choice’s growth story in 2026 comes down to an unusually agent-friendly contract: no joining fee, no monthly fee, and no exit penalty. Smart Choice is heading toward its strongest recruitment year yet. 

“We’re headed toward a record recruitment year,” says Ashley Wingate, executive vice president of sales and distribution. “We’re on pace to recruit over 2,000 agents to the network this year, which would be a record-breaking number.” 

Wingate ties that growth to agents leaving captive roles or larger firms that have been acquired, and to established independents seeking broader carrier access without giving up ownership of their book. He says Smart Choice is the fastest-growing network in the country, a claim he backs with scale: the network now spans roughly 12,000 agents across 47 states. Founder Doug Witcher started Smart Choice in High Point, NC, in 1994, building the agent-first contract terms directly into the company from its earliest days.
 

 

The pitch, Wingate says, comes down to contract terms most competitors do not match: no joining fee, no monthly fee, a 70/30 commission split that converts to 100 percent for the agent once they reach $67,000 in rolling 12-month commissions, and a one-year, non-exclusive agreement with no exit fees. Smart Choice also shares contingencies and bonuses with member agencies, and because the agreement is non-exclusive, the network adds markets without displacing carriers an agency already holds. 

Behind that contract sits a support structure Wingate describes as relationship-driven: a home office staff working alongside roughly 90 territory managers and state directors across the network’s 47-state footprint. State directors run annual state meetings and lunch-and-learns where agents network voluntarily with peers, carrier representatives, and Smart Choice staff, a format Wingate says consistently surfaces in agent case studies as a highlight of membership.

Smart Choice also positions itself as an educational resource beyond direct support, publishing roughly 20 white papers aimed at current and prospective agents, with the next one, focused on AI, due out within about a week of this interview. The network added GEICO as a carrier partner in 2025; more than 5,000 Smart Choice agents have accessed GEICO through the network so far, with that number expected to grow as more agents join and GEICO continues expanding its presence in the independent channel.

A: I do think it allows the agency to operate leaner than before. Not only our partnership with our carriers that are offering things like sales and service centers, AI and technology, comparative raters, and management systems, it all comes together to help that independent agent succeed and operate efficiently.

A: We have the most robust carrier portfolio we’ve ever had at Smart Choice. A better offering for our independent agents, more partners to help them succeed. We’ve never been busier, but we’ve never had more opportunities.

Strategic Agency Partners has been rated a 5-Star and All-Star Network for five consecutive years by leaning into consultation over pure commission-sharing. For managing director John Tiene, the network’s value has never rested on premium aggregation alone. “Everybody does the same thing,” Tiene says of carrier access. “So, it really is: what additional value do we provide to our agents?” 

That question has taken on new urgency, he says, as underwriting, customer expectations, and AI tools reshape the business simultaneously. Tiene describes the network’s relationship with its agents as consistently consultative, with members calling in for guidance on everything, from acquiring a book of business to evaluating a new technology vendor to reconsidering a carrier relationship. 

He draws a sharp line between networks like his, which he frames as acting as business consultants and growth partners, and networks still built primarily around driving profit-sharing revenue, which he believes are increasingly at risk as agents grow more willing to shop around.
 

 

Tiene points to talent scarcity as a defining pressure behind that value question. “There’s just fewer and fewer [people to hire] as baby boomers retire,” he says, citing a birth-rate decline dating to 2010 that he expects will intensify the talent crunch within about four years. 

The pressure he’s describing shows up clearly in industry data: the number of insurance professionals aged 55 and older has climbed 74 percent over the past decade, and roughly half the current insurance workforce is expected to retire within 15 years, leaving more than 400,000 positions unfilled industry-wide. 

He estimates that 60 to 70 percent of the work inside a typical agency is repetitive, which makes automation an obvious priority, but he cautions that simply buying a tool solves nothing without redesigning the underlying workflow and confirming it meets compliance requirements.

His advice to member agencies is to resist a “buy everything” approach to AI, instead assessing their own workflow first and automating four or five repetitive processes before expanding further, treating the transition as gradual rather than an overnight overhaul. 

To help agents navigate that shift, the network is hosting an AI workshop this September, bringing in an outside expert alongside agents and vendors to walk through both AI tool capabilities and the compliance issues that come with using them.

Despite the disruption, Tiene does not expect the independent agency model to shrink. He predicts the opposite: lower infrastructure requirements and better tooling will lower the barrier to entry, fueling a wave of boutique, niche-focused agencies built by younger professionals comfortable juggling multiple income streams, a mindset he calls a “gig mentality”. 

He points to his own agency as an example, running a client-facing app tied into its management system that lets clients request changes, pull documents, and buy additional coverage digitally, a setup he argues new, digital-first agencies can build from day one rather than retrofitting later.

A: At this point, you’ve got 60 to 70, maybe 75, maybe even 80 percent of all agents, independent agents in the United States, [who] are in some type of agency group. Tiene’s figure is a self-reported estimate; a 2023 Accenture survey of independent agents found a somewhat lower but still substantial 70-plus percent belong to one of roughly 150 US agency networks, broadly supporting Tiene’s account. Tiene adds that switching between networks, rare when he started in the business 20 years ago, is now common.

A: I appreciate [that] Insurance Business America ... this process that they go through of blind surveys is meaningful to us because we’re not putting a report together and giving it to you and then you just rank it. You’re actually looking at value that’s being driven to an agent and asking them to score it.” 

Direct Access Insurance Services (DAIS) differentiates itself through close-knit connectivity among its 141 retail agency partners, not sheer network size. Joe Stankowich describes the past 12 to 18 months as a genuine turning point for DAIS, driven by loosening conditions in the admitted property and casualty market. 

“We’ve seen some loosening in that space,” Stankowich says. “We’ve been able to add carrier partners, add product [availability] with some of our historic carrier partners, [and] be able to open up capacity where we were a little bit limited before.” He expects that trend to keep building through 2027.

Alongside that carrier expansion, Stankowich says DAIS has focused on building connectivity among its 141 retail agency partners through biweekly web engagements with carrier and solutions partners and smaller, peer-led roundtables of four to eight agency principals. 

“The idea is to bring these agency principals together ... and let them drive the discussion,” he says, rather than DAIS setting the agenda. He points to one recent vendor webinar that prompted five or six agency principals to commit to that vendor’s full product stack immediately afterward, evidence, he says, of how much value a curated, peer-driven introduction can carry compared to an agency vetting vendors alone. 

The network’s annual member conference, held every October, draws roughly 150 attendees for three days of networking with the DAIS team and with each other. This year’s event will make AI and technology adoption a central topic.
 

 

“DAIS is growing, but deliberately,” Stankowich says. The network adds roughly 10 new agency partners a year, prioritizing quality and fit over speed. The agencies that get the most from membership, in his view, are small to mid-size independents with five to 20 employees that already have some direct market access but need broader carrier appointments and stronger revenue on the relationships they already hold. 

Stankowich argues that remaining fully independent without a network partner has become harder regardless of an agency’s size, as larger national brokerages continue acquiring independents, though he stops short of positioning DAIS against competing networks, saying agencies tend to self-select the network that fits their stage and profile. 

Internally, he describes the business as high-touch, with the DAIS team engaged with retail partners on individual policy needs and broader market strategy at the same time, while also working to bridge carrier partners and agencies, pushing carrier messaging out to the group and advocating for agency needs back to carriers.

A: People are really looking to find out the best way to leverage technology at this point. There are a lot of vendor partners out there. There’s a lot of different tools at an agent’s disposal, and a lot of times, they’re trying to figure out how they can best leverage that technology to create the most efficient operation that they can but also compete most effectively in this space.

A: We want to be able to, number one, give them some insight on how we as an organization are leveraging technology internally, but also connect them with vetted vendor partners.e that technology to create the most efficient operation that they can but also compete most effectively in this space.

ISU Steadfast’s 2026 story is one of scale enabled by AI. Since its acquisition by Australia’s Steadfast Group, the network has grown fast while automating hundreds of thousands of routine transactions. 

Dan McCarthy describes the last 12 to 18 months as the most transformative period in his network’s history. ISU Steadfast operated as a family-owned business dating back to 1978 until it was acquired by Steadfast Group, an insurance network based in Australia – an acquisition that installed McCarthy, previously the organization’s chief operating officer for roughly 12 years, as CEO. 

“Since that time, we’ve transitioned the company from being, I’ll call it a family-owned business, to an international enterprise,” McCarthy says. “We brought on more than 45 members in our calendar year last year, 2025. And the remarkable part is that those members brought more than $1 billion of insurance premiums to our network.” 

The network’s roughly 300 members now collectively control approximately $9.6 billion in premium across the US, and McCarthy says 2026 is on pace to exceed last year’s growth.

Much of that growth is now supported by AI moving into the network’s day-to-day operations. “We began to employ AI agents that do some of the transactional work for our membership,” McCarthy says. “In fact, we have an AI agent that’ll do more than half a million transactions this year, and it’s what I call simple documentation” – routing carrier paperwork to the agent who wrote the policy, for example. McCarthy says the constraints of the old family-owned structure had limited how far he could take those investments; new ownership removed that ceiling.
 

 

McCarthy is candid that the rollout wasn’t friction-free. “It’s been a building process,” he says. “We were very specific to the limitations of AI. We knew about the situations with AI very early where it would present false results – that was 18 months ago when we began to discover those specific problems.” 

The fix, he says, was procedural: cross-checking outputs against a second source before acting on them and keeping member data walled off from external AI systems entirely. “We were very careful in sandboxing everything that we did because we didn’t want the data of the organization to make it out into the AI world.” A senior AI executive at Steadfast Group’s Australian headquarters now works directly with McCarthy’s team on enterprise-wide implementation.

That sandboxing principle shaped the network’s biggest technology build. “We implemented a piece of technology that allows us to suck out the data out of everybody’s individual management system, put that into a single data set, and then that data set is now being managed by an AI engine that allows us to mine that information for data and help us match clients to carriers,” McCarthy says. 

On the quoting side, the network went further and built its own tool rather than license one. “We have implemented our own commercial quoting engine. It’s an API-based quoting engine; we call it ISU’s Quote and Bind,” he says, comparing it to existing multi-carrier rating platforms already on the market. “We built our own because we wanted our information sandboxed in a certain way,” he adds.

The tool can take up to 50 documents, compile them into a single quote, and submit it to as many as 20 carriers at once. McCarthy describes the network’s overall approach to AI as deliberate rather than unrestrained. “I wouldn’t say it’s all in, but it’s in carefully. We run simulations with hundreds or thousands of transactions to get a desired outcome before anything goes live,” he says.

A: We have trends in two directions. Trends in the very high, large-size agency, very sophisticated, is an agency that maybe has revenue, let’s say, beyond $10 million of revenue. More sophisticated agencies tend to join our network because of that contract leniency. And then, the second trend is we’ve seen a lot of new entry agents coming into the business. Maybe they worked at an agency, they left, and now they’re going to set up their own agency for themselves, and they’re bringing over a handful of clients. To serve that second group, ISU Steadfast expanded from one membership tier to three in 2025.

A: We’ve got a good runway. Our model is not built for the 38,000 insurance agencies that are out there in the United States. We’re built for a specific group that needs a certain kind of servicing. On new entrants specifically, McCarthy adds: It’s good to be part of a group that says, hey, 50 people have tried this one; we all say thumbs up, give it a shot. That just changes your perspective as a business owner tremendously.

Across all five interviewed winners, the same theme resurfaces: AI is not replacing the need for a network, it is redefining what a network has to deliver to stay relevant. Renaissance, Strategic Agency Partners, and ISU Steadfast are all investing in structured AI education or safeguards, whether through in-house tooling, dedicated workshops, or sandboxed data policies, while Smart Choice and DAIS are betting that curated carrier and vendor relationships still beat a solo agent piecing together their own tech stack. That bet lines up with where the wider market is heading. 98 percent of insurance agencies are planning some form of AI investment in 2026, according to ReSource Pro research, making the question less whether agents adopt AI and more which networks help them do it well.

Strip away the individual names, and the pattern across this year’s top insurance aggregator groups for independent agents is the same one: none of them are winning loyalty on commission splits or carrier counts alone anymore. Every network rated highest by agents this year is competing on something less tangible such as curated technology, real consultation, and training built for a workforce that is getting older and thinner at the same time it is being asked to move faster.

That is the paradox sitting underneath this year’s results. Artificial intelligence has made it easier than ever for an agent to strike out alone, automating the back-office work that once justified a network membership by itself. Yet agents are not walking away from networks. Instead, they are rating them higher when those networks prove they still offer something a solo operation, however AI-enabled, cannot easily replicate judgement, relationships, and a second opinion when it matters.

As Summer Cole puts it, the best networks act as an unbiased extension of the agency itself. That is a harder thing to build than a carrier list, and it is precisely why it is becoming the real dividing line between a network that agents tolerate and one they actively choose.

5-Star Networks and Alliances 

• 
  Direct Access Insurance Services (DAIS)
   
  
• 
  Smart Choice
   
  
• 
  Fortified
   
  
• 
  ISU Steadfast
   
  
• 
  Renaissance
   
  
• 
  Strategic Agency Partners
   
  

5-Star Networks and Alliances

 

• 
  Direct Access Insurance Services (DAIS)
   
  
• 
  Smart Choice
   
  
• 
  Fortified
   
  
• 
  ISU Steadfast
   
  
• 
  Renaissance
   
  
• 
  Strategic Agency Partners
   
  

• Amwins Access
• State Insurance Group
• VIAA (Valley Insurance Agency Alliance)

All-Star Networks and Alliances

 

• 
  Smart Choice
   
  
• 
  Fortified
   
  
• 
  Renaissance
   
  
• 
  Strategic Agency Partners
   
  

• State Insurance Group
• VIAA (Valley Insurance Agency Alliance)