Benchmarking Data for Brokerage Operations

The Council conducted its second-annual Operations Benchmarking Survey in summer 2025, covering topics including growth and profitability, operational efficiency, budgeting, and staffing.

Survey participants were Council members, a group that comprises 150 of the top commercial insurance brokers globally. In the United States, Council members place 90% of all property and casualty (P&C) premiums and 70% of all employee benefits (EB) business.

Forty-six unique firms participated in the survey. Respondents included over one-third of The Council’s domestic membership. In only its second year, this survey remains solely directional regarding brokerage operations benchmarks. This means that because of the small sample size, results can signal the direction of the broader marketplace but cannot claim to represent it.

A note about the data time frame: Data reported comes from both fiscal year (FY) 2024 and calendar year 2025 as of Q2. Unless noted as FY 2024, survey results represent 2025 data.

Demographics

• Survey participants included CEOs/presidents, CFOs, and COOs, who together accounted for roughly 60% of respondents. Other respondents included chief accounting officers, controllers, and administrative executives.
• Annual revenue of participating firms ranged from less than $25 million to $1 billion-plus. Eighty-seven percent of respondents reported annual revenue over $25 million, and 46% reported annual revenue between $100 million and $999 million.
• Staff sizes ranged from 99 or fewer employees to 5,000 or more. Twenty-eight percent had between 1,000 and 4,999 employees, and 37% had between 100 and 499 employees.

Key Findings

• Organic growth trended slightly lower for FY 2024 than for FY 2023. The percentage of respondents reporting organic growth in the 5%–10% range rose 20 percentage points from FY 2023 to FY 2024, while the percentage reporting organic growth in the 11%–14% range dropped 7 percentage points in that period. Over two-thirds of respondents predicted growth in the 5%–10% range for FY 2025.
• Mergers and acquisitions contributed to overall growth for FY 2024, with 26% of respondents estimating at least an 11% increase in revenue due to M&A, with more than half of those indicating at least a 15% increase in revenue due to those transactions.
• Selling expense ratio rose by more than 8 percentage points from FY 2023 to FY 2024, which generally indicates an increase in operational expenses and/or a decrease in sales revenue.
• This year, respondents were asked to report selling expense ratio using two different metrics for the denominator: total sales revenue and net commissions + fees (NCF). Results showed a more than 13 percentage point increase in respondents reporting a selling expense ratio of 75% or above when reporting selling expense ratio using NCF.
• Technology was a budgeting focus in this year’s survey, with respondents reporting how they allocate their technology spend across the organization. Three main allocation approaches emerged: by team headcount, by team revenue, or by direct usage.
• Eighty-eight percent of respondents reported using artificial intelligence in their organization. The two most popular applications were for processing documents and creating content.
• Producer hiring increased from last year, with the overall average number of hires over three years increasing by more than 10 from 2024 to 2025.
• Producer tenure among respondents decreased, with the number of respondents reporting that over 50% of hires had less than three years of experience increasing by 11 percentage points.
• Turnover rates showed some changes from FY 2023 to FY 2024. While service staff showed the highest average turnover rate for the second consecutive year (31.5%), there were big drops in average turnover rates both for internal operations staff (including IT, HR, marketing, and legal), and for administrative staff. Sales staff turnover rates also dropped.

Dive into the full results.