2025 Best Practices Study

is the other organic growth lever (along with Sales Velocity) over which an agency has control. This metric is affected by P&C rate, but it is nonetheless an excellent peer comparison to gauge overall account retention.

Although accounts come and go due to acquisitions and other factors outside an agency’s control, most often a lost account results from a real or perceived service misstep or a subpar value proposition in the marketplace.

Renewed Revenue

The answer to the question, “Do we have a strong service culture?” is best answered in light of an agency’s account retention results. An agency without industry-average or better account retention results is unlikely to possess a strong service culture.

97.7%

97.7%

97.5%

96.8%

96.6%

96.3%

92.9%

<$1.25M $1.25-2.5M $2.5-5M $5-10M $10-25M $25-100M >$100M

Economic Conditions. Now we turn our attention to the first organic growth lever over which an agency has no control – the health of the overall economy. A good proxy for measuring economic health is the U.S. gross

domestic product, or GDP. GDP is the total value of all goods and services produced in the U.S. for a given time period. It's a key measure of a country's economic activity and overall health. An agency’s organic growth is highly correlated with GDP. GDP growth in 2024 was 2.8%, which is considered healthy. A robust economy is generally accompanied by expanding exposure bases and new business opportunities, which fuel organic growth. Overall, agents and brokers have a healthy economy in which to operate in 2025.

U.S. GDP Growth

6.1%

2.9%

2.8%

2.5%

-2.2%

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis

P&C Rate. The second organic rate lever over which agents have no control is P&C rate. Although rates for coverage also change in the life & health insurance space, the typical BP agency derives the vast majority of its C&F income from P&C business, so P&C rate is the measure most closely monitored for purposes of discussing agency growth.

An expanding P&C rate environment is referred to as a hard market, whereas a shrinking rate environment is known as a soft market. With average P&C rate up 6.4%, 2024 was the seventh consecutive hard market year. P&C rate cooled materially versus the prior year. Although 2024 was still a hard market year, continued market softening may be an indication that the overall growth environment will become more challenging. This will require Best Practices

CIAB P&C Rate Changes

11.3%

10.3%

9.2%

8.0%

6.4%

6.1%

4.0%

2.1%

0.2%

-1.5%

-3.3% -4.0%

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

Mid-Sized Accounts

Source: CIAB

2025 Study Highlights

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