Independent Agency Count Decline Statistics 2026: How Many Fewer Agencies Are Left After a Decade of M&A Consolidation

A Thousand Fewer Agencies in Two Years

The 2024 Big I and Future One Agency Universe Study counted approximately 39,000 independent P&C agencies nationally, down from approximately 40,000 in 2022. That is a decline of roughly 1,000 agencies, about 2.5%, over a two-year window, a genuine multi-year trend rather than a single snapshot figure that could reflect ordinary year-to-year noise.

A 2.5% decline sounds modest stated as a single percentage. Stated as a thousand fewer independently owned businesses in two years, across a channel that has historically been built on locally owned agencies, it describes a real, ongoing structural shift.

What Is Driving the Decline

The same study attributes the decline to ongoing M&A consolidation and succession and ownership-transition pressure. That lines up directly with the deal-volume data on this site’s own agency M&A statistics page, which counted 649 announced brokerage transactions through November 30, 2025 alone, a pace faster than the already-elevated prior year.

Fewer independent agencies and a faster pace of acquisitions covering the same period are not two separate stories, they are the same underlying trend measured from two different angles: one counting the population shrinking, the other counting the transactions shrinking it.

The Agencies Still Standing Are Not Getting Thinner

The same 2024 Agency Universe Study found the average independent agency appointed with 17 carriers. A shrinking population of independent agencies is not, based on this figure, a population that is also losing carrier access as it consolidates, the surviving agencies still carry meaningful carrier breadth.

That distinction matters for anyone assuming consolidation automatically means a weaker remaining channel. The count is falling, but the surviving agencies are not obviously thinner on the multi-carrier access that defines the independent-agency value proposition in the first place.

The Leading Indicator for More Decline Ahead

The same study found that 1 in 3 agencies expect an ownership change within five years. That is a forward-looking figure, not a historical one, and it points toward the count decline continuing rather than leveling off, since an ownership change is frequently the specific event that turns an independent agency into an acquisition.

A third of the current population anticipating a change of this kind within five years is a large enough share to keep the M&A and consolidation trend well supplied with willing sellers for years to come.

What a Shrinking Population Means for Competition

This is reasoning, not a separately cited statistic: a smaller number of independent agencies competing for the same pool of commercial prospects could mean less competition for the agencies that remain, more available business per surviving agency, assuming overall demand for commercial coverage does not shrink at the same rate.

It could also mean the remaining agencies are larger, better capitalized, and harder to compete against on carrier relationships and staffing, since the ones being absorbed are often smaller shops. Both dynamics are plausible from this data, and an agency principal is better served planning for a market that is consolidating around fewer, larger competitors than assuming less competition automatically means an easier path to growth.

Competing in a Consolidating Channel

An independent agency that wants to stay independent through this trend has to keep generating its own new business at a pace that justifies staying independent, rather than drifting toward the ownership-change statistic above by default.

Human + AI SDRs keep qualified new-business meetings landing on an independent agency’s calendar while the channel around it consolidates, so growth stays a choice an agency is actively making, not a decision that gets made for it.

The Numbers

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.

• Independent Agent (IA Magazine), Big I and Future One Release 2024 Agency Universe Findings
• MarshBerry, Insurance Brokerage M&A Stays Active in 2025 Amid Market Headwinds

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