Size, Segmentation, Growth and Competitive Structure of the Global Insurance Broking Market

• Worldwide, total fees and commissions earned from insurance broking activity in 2023 were worth around USD 168 billion.
• Market appears to have consolidated further during 2023 and this trend seems likely to continue during 2024.
• Close to a half of the world’s top 300 broking groups are headquartered in the US and over 80% of them are privately-owned.

According to the latest rankings and analyses updated by Insuramore (see www.insuramore.com/rankings/brokers), the value of the worldwide market for insurance broking in terms of fees and commissions earned was around USD 168 billion in 2023, up from around USD 151 billion in 2022 on a constant currency basis, equivalent to a growth rate of around 11.3% without adjusting for inflation, but closer to 4.4% as an inflation-adjusted measure.

In 2023, this market is estimated to have broken down between around USD 76.6 billion due to commercial P&C (non-life) retail broking, USD 16.5 billion to private P&C (non-life) retail broking, USD 54.5 billion to employee benefits plus life and health insurance retail broking, USD 7.4 billion to reinsurance broking and USD 13 billion to wholesale broking. (Noting that these data points omit MGA / MGU and tied agency activity among other elements, please see the PDF version of this press release for precise definitions of these segments.) Each of the segments registered a double-digit growth rate during the year apart from employee benefits plus life and health insurance retail broking; moreover, without adjusting for inflation, the top 15 broking groups together achieved an even higher aggregate growth rate of 12.3% albeit this was driven in part by M&A activity.

In terms of the value of its total broking revenues worldwide, Marsh McLennan ranked first among broking groups in 2023 and it was followed in descending order by Aon, Gallagher, WTW and HUB. Meanwhile, the leaders in each of the five broking segments were as follows:

• commercial P&C insurance retail broking – Marsh McLennan;
• private P&C insurance retail broking – Alliant;
• employee benefits activity plus retail broking of life and health cover – WTW;
• reinsurance broking – Aon;
• wholesale insurance broking – Amwins.

Overall, the top 20 groups are believed to have controlled 51.9% of total global broking fees and commissions in 2023 and the top 300 groups for 84.7%. Relative to the equivalent figures computed for 2022 (namely, a respective 51% and 83.2%), this shows that there has been some consolidation in the market structure; this is due both to M&A activity and to the strengthening of the US dollar against most global currencies during 2023, causing groups reporting in US dollars to achieve a higher weighting within the worldwide ranking.

Indeed, among the top 300 groups, the US is the headquarters for 140 (46.7%) of them; following the US by this measure are France, the UK, Canada and China, the home countries for a respective 26, 26, 16 and 15 of the largest 300 groups, with the rest of the world accounting for the remaining 77 in the analysis. Furthermore, the vast majority (at 244, or 81.3%) are privately-owned, involving one or a combination of family ownership, employee ownership or private equity.

Looking ahead, it will be apposite to see whether a continuing stream of M&A activity causes the worldwide market to consolidate further in 2024; significantly, eight of the top 300 groups were in the process of being acquired during the first half of the year.