Agency Valuation Multiples in 2026: What Determines Whether a Book Sells at 2x or 3.5x Revenue

The Headline Range, and Why It Is So Wide

A synthesis of 2026 M&A-advisory coverage puts a commercial insurance agency or book’s value at roughly 2x to 3.5x revenue, or 6x to 10x EBITDA. That is a genuinely wide range for the same underlying asset class, and the spread is not random: the top of it is reserved for books with 90%-plus client retention, diversified carrier representation, and modern digital workflow systems, while a book missing all three lands closer to the bottom.

These figures reach this page through a synthesis of several M&A-advisory sources rather than one single, independently confirmed report, so treat the range as directionally reliable rather than a precise number to plug into a specific deal without your own advisor’s input.

What Kind of Buyer Is Sitting Across the Table

The same coverage breaks the EBITDA multiple down further by buyer type, and the spread by buyer is arguably wider than the spread by book quality alone. An owner-operator or individual buyer typically pays the least, while a public brokerage typically pays the most for a comparable book, reflecting how differently each buyer type can finance a deal and how much strategic value each one expects to extract afterward.

What Line of Business You Are Selling

Line of business moves the multiple almost as much as buyer type does, per the same coverage. Personal-lines P&C books are reported to trade around 5x to 7x EBITDA, commercial-lines books around 7x to 10x, and specialty or employee-benefits books, the narrowest and most specialized segment, around 9x to 12x, the richest of the three.

A mixed book does not simply average those three figures. A buyer evaluating a blended book is typically pricing each segment against its own comparable range and weighting the result by how much revenue each segment contributes, not applying one flat multiple across the whole thing.

The One Named, Real Transaction Data Point in This Set

Most of the figures above come from general M&A-advisory guidance rather than a single named transaction dataset. The exception is Sica|Fletcher, a named M&A advisory firm reported to have found that agencies with $1 million or more in EBITDA averaged an 11.8x adjusted EBITDA multiple in the first half of 2025, drawn from a sell-side dataset of more than 450 deals, in a year that counted 714 total brokerage transactions.

That figure is the closest thing in this data set to a hard, transaction-level number, and it also reaches this page through secondary coverage rather than an independently confirmed direct pull of Sica|Fletcher’s own report, so treat the exact 11.8x figure with real caution before repeating it as a precise benchmark for a specific deal.

The Retention Number That Moves Your Multiple

Across the same coverage, one mechanic shows up consistently: 90%-plus client retention is reported to earn premium pricing and a high cash-at-close, while retention under 80% is reported to trigger heavy earn-outs and compress the multiple by two or more turns. That is a real, sourced reason two books with identical revenue can sell for very different amounts.

Retention is also one of the few valuation drivers an agency principal can influence well before a sale is on the horizon, unlike broader market conditions or buyer appetite, which are largely outside any single agency’s control.

How Fast the Bar for Scale Has Moved

Per IA Magazine’s reporting on Insurance Journal’s Top 100 report, the revenue needed to rank as the 100th-largest property and casualty broker rose from $13.8 million in 2020 to $18 million in 2024. The 10th-largest brokerage’s own revenue threshold moved even more dramatically, jumping $300 million over the same five years, driven primarily by aggressive private-equity-backed acquisition activity across the channel.

That is a directly sourced, unhedged figure, not a WebSearch-summary estimate like the multiples above, and it tells its own version of the same story: the scale it now takes to be considered large has moved fast enough that a book’s size relative to its peers looks very different in 2024 than it did just four years earlier.

What This Means If a Sale Is on Your Horizon

Put the pieces together and three levers stand out as things an agency principal can act on before a sale, rather than simply accept as given: retention, since it is reported to move the multiple by two or more full turns on its own; carrier diversification, since it is named directly as a top-of-range driver; and organic new-business growth, since a buyer of any type is ultimately valuing the trend the book is on, not just its current size.

None of the three is a quick fix in the months right before a closing. All three are exactly the kind of groundwork that compounds if an agency starts treating them as valuation levers years, not weeks, before an actual sale conversation begins.

Synthesized from 2026 M&A-advisory coverage (CT Acquisitions, Ada Astra Equity, and Insurance Agency Trader); treat as a directionally corroborated range rather than a single, independently verified figure, and confirm against your own advisor for a specific deal.

Sources

The external data in this guide 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.

• CT Acquisitions, Insurance Agency Valuation (2026): Book Multiples
• Ada Astra Equity, Insurance Agency Valuation & EBITDA Multiples (2026)
• Insurance Agency Trader (The Insurance Dudes), How Insurance Agencies Are Valued in 2026
• IA Magazine, Private Equity in Insurance: What Independent Agencies Need to Know

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