Top insurance brokers, No. 9: Howden Insurance Brokers
2025 brokerage revenue: $4.01B (BI estimate)
Percent increase: 6.4%
Howden Insurance Brokers continued its rapid expansion over the past year, increasing revenue and strengthening its position among the world’s 10 largest insurance brokerages as it pursued an ambitious build-out of its U.S. retail brokerage business.
Founded in London by CEO David Howden in 1994, the employee and private equity-owned brokerage has grown into a global intermediary spanning retail brokerage, reinsurance, employee benefits, personal lines and managing general agency operations. The company employed about 24,000 people at the end of fiscal 2025, up from 22,000 a year earlier.
Business Insurance estimates Howden reported brokerage revenue of £3.15 billion ($4.01 billion) for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2025, up 6.4% compared with a year earlier. The brokerage rose one place to No. 9 in Business Insurance’s ranking of the world’s largest brokers.
Much of Howden’s recent growth has been driven by its aggressive expansion into the U.S. retail brokerage market. Led by U.S. CEO Mike Parrish, a former Marsh Risk executive who joined last year, the company has recruited hundreds of producers and executives from rival brokerages as it builds a national operation from scratch.
The strategy has triggered a wave of litigation. Marsh, Aon, Willis Towers Watson, Brown & Brown, Alliant and Acrisure have filed lawsuits accusing Howden and former employees of unfair hiring practices, including breaches of nonsolicitation agreements and the improper solicitation of clients and colleagues.
While producer-poaching disputes are common in the brokerage industry, analysts say the scale and pace of Howden’s recruitment campaign have made it unusually disruptive.
“Howden has taken a lot of people,” said Meyer Shields, managing director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in Baltimore. The hiring drive has affected competitors’ organic growth and increased compensation pressure across the brokerage industry as rivals move to retain key producers, he said.
“There’s more pressure on broker compensation because you’ve got an aggressive hirer that’s willing to pay quite generous amounts because it wants to establish itself,” he said.
Howden has adopted a more aggressive recruitment strategy than most competitors and has become a significant near-term concern for large publicly traded brokers, said Minneapolis-based J. Paul Newsome, managing director at Piper Sandler & Co.
“Howden has taken a much more aggressive approach than really any other broker has to date in terms of hiring people,” he said.
Despite the controversy, the strategy has produced rapid growth. Howden has built 20 industry and specialty practice groups focused on sectors including health care, construction, marine, natural resources and private client services.
The company has attracted more than 3,000 clients across all 50 states and all 20 specialty practices since launching the U.S. retail operation, Mr. Parrish said.
“We had a very specific forecast for our business in 2026 and we’re delivering on that. In fact, we’re over it at every single target,” he said.
Mr. Parrish said the strategy focuses on hiring experienced specialists and granting them greater autonomy. Many of its senior hires are well-known producers in the industry.
“We’ve created a true A-plus team to lead the verticals,” he said. “We’ve had success in all of them.”
The company also continued to use acquisitions to add specialist capabilities. Notable 2025 transactions included U.K. pension and employee benefits consultancy Barnett Waddingham, Los Angeles-based sports and entertainment brokerage Gravitas and several other international acquisitions. Howden completed 67 acquisitions during the year.
“Our strategy is primarily built around finding capability that’s truly differentiated,” Mr. Parrish said.
The expansion has not been without challenges. S&P Global Ratings said in a report earlier this year that Howden’s rapid U.S. growth strategy, acquisition activity and litigation costs have weighed on profitability.
The ratings agency also warned that Howden’s entry into the U.S. retail brokerage market creates execution risks and could strain relationships with some U.S. wholesale brokerage clients that now compete directly with the company’s retail operations.
Still, it described 2025 as a “transformational year” for Howden’s U.S. retail brokerage strategy.
Despite a softer commercial insurance pricing environment, Mr. Parrish said Howden’s growth remains ahead of expectations.
“We forecasted correctly what the market was,” he said.