Worldwide Market for Insurance Broking in Terms of Fees and Commissions Earned Was Around $180 Billion In 2024
- Written by: iPMI Global
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 180 billion in 2024, up from around USD 166.5 billion in 2023 on a constant currency basis, equivalent to a growth rate of around 8.1% without adjusting for inflation, but closer to 2.6% as an inflation-adjusted measure. Without adjusting for inflation, the top 15 broking groups together achieved an even higher aggregate growth rate of 10.7% albeit this was driven in part by M&A activity. Among these, Alliant and Howden were the groups that expanded their broking revenues most rapidly.
In 2024, the market is estimated to have broken down between around USD 83.3 billion due to commercial P&C (non-life) retail broking, USD 18.2 billion to private P&C (non-life) retail broking, USD 55.8 billion to employee benefits plus life and health insurance retail broking, USD 8.3 billion to reinsurance broking and USD 14.7 billion to wholesale broking. (Noting that these data points omit MGA / MGU and tied agency activity among other elements, please see the following two pages for precise definitions of these segments.) Revenues from reinsurance and wholesale broking grew most quickly during the year while those from employee benefits plus life and health insurance retail broking recorded the least growth.
In terms of the value of its total broking revenues worldwide, Marsh McLennan ranked first among broking groups in 2024, and it was followed in descending order by Aon, Gallagher, WTW and Acrisure. 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 15 groups are believed to have controlled 48.7% of total global broking fees and commissions in 2024, up from 47.6% in 2023 and 45.8% in 2020. This shows that there has been some consolidation in the market structure which is mainly due to M&A activity. Looking ahead, it will be apposite to see whether further such activity causes the worldwide market to consolidate further in 2025; significantly, eight of the top 500 groups were in the process of being acquired during the first half of the year.
Among the top 500 groups in 2024, the US is the headquarters for 233 (46.6%) of them; following the US by this measure are the UK, France, Canada and Germany, the home countries for a respective 49, 35, 31 and 21 of the largest 500 groups, with the rest of the world accounting for the remaining 131 in the analysis. Furthermore, the vast majority (at 430, or 86.0%) are privately-owned, involving one or a combination of family ownership, employee ownership or private equity.
