Top insurance brokers, No. 8: Lockton

2025 brokerage revenue: $4.37B
Percent increase: 11%

Lockton continued its strategy of focusing on organic growth rather than acquisitions in 2025.

The privately held brokerage saw double-digit revenue growth across its main divisions and continued to expand overseas, its top executive said.

The revenue growth has been accompanied by a steady profit margin, analysts say.

Lockton reported $4.37 billion in brokerage revenue in 2025, an 11% increase over the same period last year, moving up one place to No. 8 in the Business Insurance ranking of the world’s largest brokers.

“We had strong performances from all of our major business sectors: U.S., international, and reinsurance,” said Chairman and CEO Ron Lockton.

The U.S. business reported 11% revenue growth, and international and reinsurance were both up 15%, he said.

U.S. revenue was around $3 billion in 2025 and recorded its ninth consecutive year of double-digit growth, he said. Lockton’s client retention rate was 94% year over year, and its people solutions business in the U.S., which includes benefits consulting, crossed the billion-dollar revenue mark for the first time, he said.

Lockton Re, the reinsurance brokerage business it formed in 2019, continued to grow with the unit adding teams in Paris and the Middle East, Mr. Lockton said.

“The story there is organic growth, growing our existing client relationships and adding new clients,” Mr. Lockton said. The reinsurance brokerage now has more than 480 clients, he said.

It has also increased investments in its capital markets and capital advisory practice.

Lockton has seen growth without major acquisitions over the past several years, analysts say.

“They’ve been able to grow their revenue pretty meaningfully over the past four to five years, while achieving steady margin, so they generate pretty strong cash flow from that,” said Joseph Marinucci, Princeton, New Jersey-based director at S&P Global Ratings, a unit of S&P Global. The brokerage is “strongly retail focused,” he said.

Lockton’s growth contrasts with some of its peers, in which growth has come more through acquisitions, said Timothy J. Cunningham, managing director at Chicago-based investment banking and financial consulting firm Optis Partners.

“A significant amount of the others’ growth was acquired, whereas Lockton just hasn’t done that,” Mr. Cunningham said, adding that acquisition growth may become more challenging due to the slowing of overall merger and acquisition activity.

“They acquire talent, but they don’t acquire other firms,” he said. “It’s a good strategy, and they have been reasonably consistent with that.”

“They’re not really a roll-up shop; they don’t really use acquisition that much. They’ve done a very good job of achieving strong organic growth relative to peers,” Mr. Marinucci said.

“We think (organic growth is) the purest performance indicator, and it’s something that we spend a lot of time focusing on,” Mr. Lockton said.

The brokerage reported about 10% organic growth in 2025 and 13% in the first quarter of 2026, he said.

Looking ahead, “we continue to see opportunities in expanding our specialty capabilities,” Mr. Lockton said.

Challenges will come from the softness in commercial property insurance rates, which have persisted for several quarters. “The major headwind has really been the dramatic softening of the property insurance market, and its impact on both our retail and our wholesale business in the U.K.,” Mr. Lockton said.

The broker “will continue to look opportunistically at acquisitions,” and expects consolidation to continue, “but our approach is going to remain pretty disciplined,” he said.

International expansion will continue, he said. In the past year, Lockton obtained a reinsurance license in Saudi Arabia, launched a reinsurance operation in Dubai and took a majority shareholding in its Malaysian partner, renaming it Lockton Sime Insurance Brokers.

In addition, Sydney-based Marcus Pearson, a former Marsh executive, was named CEO of Lockton’s Pacific region.

Meanwhile, Lockton broke ground on May 28 for its new headquarters in Leawood, Kansas, outside Kansas City. The office is scheduled to open in early 2030.

Lockton is “approaching AI as part of a broader strategy around data analytics and operational intelligence, rather than as a standalone tool,” Mr. Lockton said. “We think the long-term differentiation will come from quality of data integration across systems and an organization’s ability to drive adoption and execution.”