Insurance brokerage consolidation may chip away at retailers’ reliance on the wholesale channel, but Insurance Business America readers largely expect wholesalers to retain a significant role as larger brokers build more specialty capabilities in-house.
An IBA LinkedIn poll asked whether brokerage consolidation would reduce reliance on wholesalers. As of publishing time, 43% said it would do so “somewhat,” while another 20% thought the impact would be limited to simpler risks. Only 7% expected reliance on wholesalers to fall significantly. Another 28% said consolidation would not really reduce it.
The results come as some of the biggest insurance brokerage transactions in years reshape US distribution and give large retailers access to capabilities that historically may have sat elsewhere in the market.
Aon’s planned $17 billion acquisition of USI Insurance Services is the latest example. USI brings approximately $3 billion in annual revenue, more than 10,500 employees and a sizeable US middle-market business. Aon has specifically highlighted USI’s presence in excess and surplus lines as one of the attractions of the deal.
This deal follows Aon’s $13 billion purchase of NFP in 2024. Elsewhere, Marsh McLennan completed its $7.75 billion acquisition of McGriff Insurance Services in November 2024, adding a brokerage with approximately $1.3 billion in annual revenue to Marsh McLennan Agency.
Overall transaction numbers have actually cooled from their recent highs.
OPTIS Partners counted 695 announced US and Canadian insurance agency M&A transactions in 2025, down 12% from 787 in 2024 and 24% below the previous five-year average. The number of unique buyers also fell to 95 from 104 a year earlier.
But the string of multibillion-dollar transactions at the upper end of the brokerage market is raising a different question: what happens to the traditional relationship between large retail brokers and wholesalers when retailers acquire more specialty and E&S capabilities of their own?
Peter McMurtie, insurance practice leader at consulting firm West Monroe, said the trend toward internal wholesale operations was already visible across large brokerages.
“The majority are creating internal wholesaling operations,” McMurtie said. “But the key is they’re still going to need to partner with and work with those other large wholesalers. I think we’re going to see over the next couple of years how those sort of friendly competitors play out in the market.”
McMurtie expects large brokerages to be selective about what they bring in-house, concentrating on areas where they already control enough business to justify developing specialist expertise and market relationships.
“They’ll look at those segments… where they can bring a level of expertise and access to markets that they can replicate,” he said. This shift could put pressure on wholesalers for some business sitting between highly transactional placements and the most complex specialty risks.
But McMurtie also warned there are limits to how much of the wholesale proposition retail brokers can reproduce internally. He believes established wholesalers will still be able to control “the more complex risks and the more niche markets.”
Large wholesalers also have an advantage at the transactional end of the market, where investments in technology can make it easier for retailers to access capacity quickly.
The dynamic is unfolding while E&S and specialty insurance continue to take a larger role in US commercial distribution, giving both internal wholesale operations and established intermediaries room to grow. In the future, the relationship between the two may continue evolving rather than retailers simply replacing outside wholesalers.
“We’re seeing the E&S and specialty market outpace the growth of the standard market, so there’s lots of capacity for everybody to be operating there,” said McMurtie.
