The next growth engine for brokers

00:03 - Paul Lucas: Hello everybody. Welcome to Insurance Business TV. We are here at InsureFest 2026 for another peer-to-peer interview and I'm now alongside Allen Madden who is the senior vice president at Alliance Insurance Services. So, Allen, welcome to Insurance Business TV.

00:32 - Allen Madden: Thank you. Great to be here.

00:35 - Paul Lucas: So, we're going to talk a little bit about the sort of the progress of the brokerage space. Of course, we've seen a lot of change over the last few years, haven't we? Well, just give us some insight into that. What has changed beyond simply just placing risk?

00:53 - Allen Madden: For the brokers? Well, speaking from some M&A experience, so I was with McGriff Seibels & Williams for a number of years and then Wells Fargo, which became USI, to now at Alliant over the course of multi-decades, but in that you continue to see you know, this M&A trend of you know, the larger brokers buying more of the middle market brokers. You know, McGriff now with M&A. Um you know, NFP and Aon and so forth. So, I think um we'll continue to see that. Alliant is not um in that that acquisitive nature as much with buying, you know, bigger brokers. Um we do more like talent by talent.

01:29 - Paul Lucas: Yeah.

01:31 - Allen Madden: Um and I think you'll see that you know, as long as we're going down that road and getting funded, you know, we'll stay independent. Um at some point we'll probably go after you, but as far as like um the day-to-day for us, it's just maintaining and building and enhancing our culture. You know, when you see these brokers going through these mergers, acquisitions, and I've experienced myself, I think you do see some cultural changes, right? It's hard. And a lot of the brokers are inward focused for a while instead of being outwardly focused for their clients. Um they're merging the they're merging and melding and you know, then they got to refigure out their platforms and culture and you get some talent kind of friction in there. So, um those are the kind of things that as I sit there and you know, we also have competition, you know, but as far as we're you know, kind of staying the course, um I think there's opportunity to you know, continue our growth as Alliant um without some of that friction.

02:12 - Paul Lucas: Well, just talk to me a little bit more about that M&A if you don't mind. What do you think is driving that sort of rush for consolidation? Is it about talent? Is it about scale? Is it about technology?

02:24 - Allen Madden: I think it's all of that. I think um I think the model that Alliant has that we're a specialty broker um and that and as far as what I do, my division, The Americas, we really are a core brokerage operation of Alliant, but we also are there to feed the talent.

02:44 - Paul Lucas: Right?

02:45 - Allen Madden: The specialty talent. And I think it's people have seen that as a great model. Um it's always been good to have sub- subject matter expertise, um dedicated talent to environmental or construction or whatever, you know, having the expert. But for Alliant um you know, to keep scaling like we want to do and I think for our competition, I think specialty is an area that people want to do. And yes, that takes talent, that takes money to get those individuals, those teams. I think you're also seeing like again, you're seeing of an Aon buying an entity, you know, we see this Acrisure on and on that the big brokers you know, are going after more of the middle market, you know, right? And so that takes money, that takes acquisitions. Um and I think just the scale of it, the AI, the technology, all that's expensive. So, I think that's where you're seeing this consolidation.

03:47 - Paul Lucas: Yeah, and I because a lot has changed in the market over the last few years. Have you had to have any difficult conversations, hard conversations with clients that perhaps you weren't having a few years ago?

03:59 - Allen Madden: Yeah, I mean I think I think the difference these days is um there's so much change. I mean there's always been change, but economically, politically, um environmentally, I mean you just have a lot going on these days.

04:12 - Paul Lucas: Yeah.

04:13 - Allen Madden: And our clients also have a lot of change, right? They're trying to keep up with what they're doing as far as responding to these kind of trends.

04:20 - Paul Lucas: Yeah.

04:21 - Allen Madden: And a lot of them are more international. So, the more sophisticated, different, and sometimes difficult conversations are where do we need to go?

04:29 - Paul Lucas: Yeah.

04:30 - Allen Madden: Right? And what do we need to anticipate as far as doing business overseas? And you look at some of the political risk and you look at um some of the economics behind, you know, what you want to do?

04:40 - Paul Lucas: Yeah.

04:41 - Allen Madden: And how does that align and marry up to ensure

04:43 - Paul Lucas: customer risk management.

04:44 - Allen Madden: And I think those are not as straightforward, clear-cut decision-making items. And so, that's where it becomes a little bit more difficult with the client because it you know, a lot of times it involves money.

04:54 - Paul Lucas: Yeah.

04:55 - Allen Madden: And people.

04:57 - Paul Lucas: Well, let's flip it. Let's talk less about the difficulties. Let's talk about the opportunities. What do you think the real opportunities are for brokerage growth in the next few years?

05:07 - Allen Madden: Yeah, I think again like being um especially Brooke, right? Offering more expertise to your clients. I mean, before you know, we don't have to go way back, but you know, before it'd be kind of like, "Hey, you got a producer, you got a team. You know, they can kind of be all things to all people. You know, we can do the D&O, and we can place the environmental, and we can kind of do a pretty good job, and you know, those kind of things." But nowadays, the expertise can be brought in and say, "Okay, look, I have a team that does executive risk. Yeah, I have a team that does environmental. You know, we don't want to mess that up. We want to bring this these resources to bear for you." And I think I think if you continue to do that, clients will appreciate it.

06:05 - Paul Lucas: Yeah.

06:06 - Allen Madden: Clients are demanding it. You're having these conversations because you don't want another broker having those conversations with your client.

06:12 - Paul Lucas: Yeah.

06:13 - Allen Madden: Right? So, I think that's the opportunity for growth, but I think at the end of the day a broker has to do the three things I would say that every broker needs to do successfully, consistently well, which is placement, advice, and service.

06:27 - Paul Lucas: Yeah.

06:28 - Allen Madden: Right? And so, at the end of the day and that goes back to culture and whatever frictional things are going on internally, if you can align yourself and do those things every day.

06:37 - Paul Lucas: Yeah.

06:38 - Allen Madden: You know, consistently well. That's what the client wants, and for those people you will continue to grow.