Independent insurance agents write 62% of all US property and casualty policies, according to the Big I's 2026 Market Share Report, yet fewer than half say the carriers they work with treat them as partners.
That gap is the central finding of the JD Power 2026 US Independent Agent Satisfaction Study. The ninth annual study, developed with the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (IIABA), surveyed 4,355 agent evaluations of personal and commercial lines insurers from May through July 2026. It found that just 48% of agents view their primary carriers as trusted partners. The remainder are split between viewing carriers as providers (29%) or vendors (18%). That distinction carries measurable consequences for placement behavior.
Agents who view a carrier as a partner are 43 percentage points more likely to recommend it within the next six months and 37 points more likely to write more business with it. The attributes that drive partner status are trust, cited by 76% of agents with a partner-level carrier relationship, and innovation, cited by 50%. Being the lowest-cost carrier ranked last at 17%, and being seen as established ranked at 37% - well below the relational factors.
The personal and commercial lines results point in opposite directions. Overall satisfaction with personal lines carriers rose three points year-over-year to 667 on a 1,000-point scale. Commercial lines satisfaction fell 16 points to 669. The decline, JD Power said, was observed across all six dimensions it measures: business support, compensation, ease of doing business, operational support, product competitiveness, and client servicing. No single friction point drove the drop. The deterioration was broad.
The 2025 study, which found that only 57% of commercial lines agents said carriers were meeting even their foundational needs, had already flagged the relationship as strained. The 2026 data suggests the underlying conditions haven't improved.
Craig Martin, executive director of global insurance intelligence at JD Power, said the value equation for agent-carrier relationships has shifted. "Independent agents want to work with carriers that understand their business, value them as agents and care about their mutual success," Martin said. "Those are the ones they are most likely to recommend and with whom they will write the most policies."
Auto-Owners Insurance ranked highest among personal lines carriers in agent satisfaction with a score of 720, followed by Erie Insurance (709) and Liberty Mutual (683). In commercial lines, The Hartford led with 706, ahead of Travelers (704) and Chubb (694).
On the technology front, 67% of independent agents now use AI tools in their work, up from the prior year. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot are the most commonly used platforms. AI adoption is highest among Gen Y and Gen Z agents at 73% and lowest among Boomers at 34%. The generational gap points to an operational divide that will widen as younger agents take a larger share of the market.
The study's six dimensions remained unchanged from 2025, allowing direct year-over-year comparison.
