Cole Tynes just sold a business that has operated under family leadership since 1926, and the terms he got aren't public. But the market data around his deal is, and it tells a story worth more attention than the acquisition itself.
According to MarshBerry data, insurance agencies with $1 million or more in adjusted EBITDA averaged an 11.8x multiple in the first half of 2025, while smaller lower middle market brokerages, those with $2 million to $10 million in revenue and $750,000 to $2 million in adjusted EBITDA, transacted at roughly 7x to 9x adjusted EBITDA between 2024 and Q2 2026, per MarshBerry and OPTIS Partners figures.
Financial terms were not included in the Hocker announcement, but those ranges give any agency owner sizing up their own business a live benchmark, not a theoretical one.
That pricing has held up even as the number of active buyers has thinned out. North American agency deal volume fell to its slowest since 2016, with just 292 acquisitions recorded through June, down 15% on the same period in 2025, according to OPTIS Partners data.
Full-year 2025 itself closed 12% below 2024, the third straight year of decline. Fewer deals are getting done, yet the ones that are still happening aren't going for bargain prices, which is the opposite of what a cooling market usually produces.
That gap between deal volume and deal pricing comes down to who's left standing on the buy side. Data compiled by Tracxn puts Inszone Insurance Services' cumulative acquisition count at 137 since its 2002 founding, with activity peaking at 43 deals in 2024.
The firm was recently ranked among the three most active broker buyers in the US in 2025, alongside BroadStreet Partners and World Insurance Associates, the three together accounting for 19.4% of all broker M&A transactions recorded that year, per OPTIS Partners. Roughly 70% to 72% of announced deals in the first half of 2026 went to private capital-backed and hybrid buyers, according to MarshBerry's H1 2026 report.
A shrinking pool of well-funded platforms is absorbing a growing share of what deal activity remains, which matters more to a prospective seller than the headline decline in overall volume.
Inszone's latest move puts that dynamic into a real transaction. The firm has acquired Hocker Family Insurance, a Morgantown, Kentucky agency founded by Leland O. Hocker in 1926 and now run by the fourth generation of family leadership, offering personal, commercial, life and health cover across the region.
Tynes' reason for selling, once he decided to, is one that keeps surfacing in Inszone's deal history. Gary Hanson, who sold his Scottsdale, Arizona firm Professional Insurance Strategies to Inszone earlier this year, gave nearly identical reasoning.
"We reached a point where we needed more resources and a solid professional perpetuation plan for the future," said Hanson.
Tynes described his own list of conditions in similar terms. "There were several things that had to be true for me to move forward. I wanted to ensure our employees would be taken care of, that our local office would remain part of the community, and that our clients would continue receiving the personal service they've always known. Inszone was the only organization I found that aligned with all of those priorities," said Tynes.
For agencies without an internal successor, that gap between wanting to stay independent and needing a plan is increasingly what decides the timing of a sale, not the health of the wider market.
Inszone's Kentucky presence didn't start with Hocker. The firm's first deal in the state came the previous year, when it bought Lexington Insurance Agency, founded in 1952 by Garvice Kincaid and employee-owned since 2004. Nor is Inszone the only outside buyer active there. Afore Insurance Services made its own first move into Kentucky earlier this year, buying Louisville-area benefits agency Myron K. Hobbs & Company, while Hilb Group also closed on a Kentucky property and casualty agency effective May 1, 2026.
Three national buyers moving on Kentucky agencies inside twelve months means an owner weighing a sale there isn't negotiating with a single interested party.
"We are excited to welcome Hocker Family Insurance to Inszone. The team at Hocker has built an incredible legacy over the past 100 years. We look forward to supporting their team with additional resources while preserving the local relationships and personalized service that have made them such a trusted name in Kentucky," said Chris Walters, chief executive of Inszone.
Under the agreement, Hocker's clients will keep working with the same local team, while gaining access to Inszone's wider carrier relationships, technology and back-office resources.
The Morgantown office isn't closing, and no changes to staffing have been announced. The deal closes out four generations of family leadership at Hocker Family Insurance, on terms Tynes said matched the conditions he'd set from the start.
