The Deal Volume Numbers, and Why They Are Falling
Per OPTIS Partners’ tracked deal data, as reported by Insurance Journal, insurance agency M&A totaled 695 deals in 2025, down 12 percent from 2024. That slide continued into 2026: the first half of the year saw just 292 deals, down 15 percent from 342 in the first half of 2025 and the lowest first-half total in seven years. Q1 2026 alone recorded 148 deals, the lowest for that quarter since 2016 and, per the same reporting, the 10th consecutive quarter of deal volume running below the long-term trend line.
OPTIS Partners partner Steve Germundson, quoted in that coverage, characterized the three-year slide as “beginning to bottom out to about 650 deals per year.” Read plainly, that is a real, sourced signal that the acquisition pace that defined the last several years is settling into something lower and steadier, not accelerating further.
Who Is Buying
Even as total deal volume falls, the buyer mix has not diversified. Private-equity-backed or hybrid buyers accounted for roughly 72 percent of all acquisitions in Q1 2026, per IA Magazine, and roughly 76 percent across the first half of 2026, per a separate count from AgencyEquity. Concentration runs even deeper at the top: per that same reporting, the top 10 buyers accounted for 51.5 percent of all announced deals through May 2026, with BroadStreet Partners, Inszone Insurance Services, and ALKEME alone taking 30.7 percent of all deals.
In Q1 2026 specifically, Inszone (17 deals) and BroadStreet Partners (16 deals) were the most active named buyers. Fewer total deals happening among a smaller, more concentrated group of repeat buyers is a meaningfully different market than a broad wave of acquisitions spread across many buyers, even though both would show up in a headline as “PE keeps buying agencies.”
Why the Pace Is Slowing Even as PE Still Dominates
Per IA Magazine’s reporting, current higher interest rates have “fundamentally altered PE economics.” OneDigital’s Jeff Yamin, quoted in the same coverage, put it bluntly: “When the tide goes out, you sort of see who’s been swimming naked.” That is a real, named practitioner’s read on why deal volume has cooled even as the buyer pool remains PE-dominated: financing a roll-up strategy got more expensive, which slows the pace without necessarily changing who is still buying.
The same reporting notes that agencies which fail to integrate well after a sale face “costly remediation efforts or valuation discounts.” That detail matters for reading the whole trend correctly, since it means the buyers still active in a slower market are not guaranteed to execute every acquisition cleanly just because they closed the deal.
What It Means for the Independent Agent Down the Street
A slowing deal pace combined with continued buyer concentration sends a mixed signal, not a single clean one. Fewer local competitors are getting acquired than the peak-year headlines suggested, since total deal volume is down for a third consecutive year. But the deals that do happen are increasingly concentrated among a handful of repeat, well-capitalized buyers, meaning any given competitor that does sell is more likely than before to end up under one of a small number of familiar names.
Whether that makes the newly acquired competitor stronger is a separate question entirely. The same integration-risk finding above applies just as directly here: an acquired agency that integrates poorly can face real, documented setbacks rather than an automatic upgrade, which is exactly the kind of disruption window a still-independent agent down the street can prospect into rather than assume away.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- Insurance Journal, Trend of Fewer Insurance M&A Deals ’Bottoming Out’: OPTIS
- IA Magazine, Insurance Agency M&A Falls 6% in First Quarter
- AgencyEquity, Insurance Agency M&A Slows in First Half of 2026 but Demand for Quality Agencies Remains Strong
- IA Magazine, Private Equity in Insurance: What Independent Agencies Need to Know