Top insurance brokers, No. 5: Brown & Brown

2025 brokerage revenue: $5.76B
Percent increase: 22.5% 

Family-run since its founding in 1939, Brown and Brown is breaking revenue records and absorbing its biggest-ever acquisition while fending off investor concerns about slow organic growth relative to its peers.

In August, the firm completed its $9.83 billion purchase of Accession Risk Management Group, parent of retailer Risk Strategies and wholesaler One80 Intermediaries. The deal adds about $1.7 billion in annual revenue to Brown & Brown.

It also adds about 5,500 staff and diversifies the firm’s business through complementary specialties and One80’s casualty-driven businesses, said Brown & Brown President and CEO J. Powell Brown. Accession’s strengths include agriculture, health care, private equity, reinsurance and captives.

“We see growth opportunities in both retail and programs,” Mr. Brown said. “That could be in middle market, large accounts, employee benefits. In retail, it could be cat property. It could be casualty-driven programs, professional liability programs, and our transactional wholesale and binding authority business. We think there are growth opportunities in all of them.”

With the addition of Accession, Brown & Brown moved up two places in Business Insurance’s ranking of the world’s largest brokers to No. 5, with $5.76 billion in 2025 brokerage revenue, a 22.5% increase.

Mr. Brown touted the recent recruitment of Eileen Akerson as chief legal officer and Dori Henderson as chief information technology officer as key hires. Ms. Henderson will lead the firm’s efforts to combine its data and artificial intelligence capabilities to “create mechanisms and products and trading with our carrier partners in ways that may not exist or are in their nascent stages,” he said.

Brown & Brown faced a setback late last year, when 275 employees left overnight to join rival Howden. The firm estimates it lost $23 million in annual revenue and remains in litigation with Howden.

In April’s first-quarter conference call, the firm reported a 35.4% year-over-year revenue increase driven primarily by the Accession deal. But it also reported flat organic revenue growth. Several rivals reported mid-single-digit growth for the period.

Publicly owned brokerages have seen their shares suffer amid a prolonged decline in property rates and concerns over AI disintermediation, said Elyse Greenspan, managing director of equity research at Wells Fargo. While Brown & Brown is “doing OK,” Ms. Greenspan said, “typically we tend to favor the insurance brokers printing the strongest organic growth, which at this time would not include Brown and Brown.”

“They’ve been impacted a little more by some of the pricing environment and the slowdown that we’ve seen in organic revenue growth than some of their peers,” said Brian Meredith, managing director at UBS Group.

Mr. Meredith nonetheless branded Brown & Brown “a very good company, very well-positioned in the small-to-middle market space. In a protracted soft market, the small to mid-market space tends to be less volatile from a pricing perspective. So, we assume they could hold their organic growth steadier after we get through this transition period.”

Mr. Brown attributed the slower organic growth to property rate declines, the Accession integration, personnel losses to Howden and a shift in the revenue model for its pharmacy consulting business.

With its share price lower, Brown & Brown repurchased $100 million of its stock in the fourth quarter and $250 million in the first quarter. The firm is still “reviewing and looking at specialty acquisitions and businesses that could fold into an existing office,” Mr. Brown said.

Brown & Brown’s 2026 market trend report noted mostly softening rates, abundant capacity and heightened competition across property, casualty, cyber and executive and specialty lines. In the broader economy, Mr. Brown noted “a little hesitancy and wait and see” among businesses concerned about inflation.

Despite the headwinds, Chief Financial Officer R. Andrew Watts projected “improving” organic growth through the year in an earnings call as the firm places less catastrophe property and One80’s contributions to growth kick in.

“We’re continuing to write lots of new business and trying to retain as many of our existing customers as we can,” Mr. Brown said, adding, “We feel like we’re well positioned. We’ll work through this kind of nutty property market and we’re excited about the team that we have and the leadership of the combined organizations.”