2026 Edition — the market for Florida insurance agencies and books of business under $1 million in revenue
Nobody publishes data on Florida's small-agency market — the thousands of one-to-five-person shops that write most of this state's Main Street insurance. The deal reports track the aggregators. The demographic studies stop at the national level. And the owner of a $400,000-revenue agency in Orange Park who wants to know what the market looks like has, until now, had nowhere to look. This report exists to fix that. Every figure in it comes from a government body, a carrier, or a named industry authority, cited inline — no estimates dressed up as data, and nothing sourced from anyone's marketing department.
The U.S. Census Bureau's County Business Patterns — the federal count of business establishments — puts Florida's insurance agency and brokerage population (NAICS 524210) at 10,837 establishments employing 69,499 people in the 2023 reference year, up from 10,533 establishments in 2022.[1] [2] The industry is growing, not shrinking — but the more important number for anyone thinking about buying or selling is the size distribution: 73.3% of Florida agency establishments have fewer than five employees, and 88.7% have fewer than ten.[1]
Read that against the deal data in §2 and the picture sharpens: the overwhelming majority of Florida agencies are exactly the kind of business the national buyers do not pursue — too small for private-equity models that need scale on every close, and too small for a broker's auction to earn its fee.
| County | Agency establishments (2023) | Change vs 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| Miami-Dade | 1,628 | — |
| Broward | 1,370 | — |
| Palm Beach | 1,077 | — |
| Hillsborough | 747 | — |
| Orange | 677 | — |
| Duval (Jacksonville) | 399 | +22 (from 377) |
| St. Johns | 130 | +7 (from 123) |
| Clay | 61 | −3 (from 64) |
| Nassau | 23 | unchanged |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, NAICS 524210, 2023 reference year (latest published).[1] [3] Counts are establishments (locations), not firms; a multi-office agency counts once per office. Northeast Florida’s four core counties hold roughly 613 agency locations — the local universe this report’s publisher operates in.
Insurance agency M&A has cooled hard from its 2021–22 peak. OPTIS Partners — whose quarterly count is the industry's standard scoreboard — recorded 695 announced deals in 2025, down 12% from 787 in 2024.[4] The first half of 2026 produced 292 deals, the slowest start to a year since 2016, with the second quarter down 25% year-over-year; the trailing-twelve-month count of 646 is the lowest since early 2019, and OPTIS counts ten consecutive quarters below the long-term trend line, with volume “probably bottoming out” near 650 deals a year.[5] [6]
Who is buying is as important as how much. Private-equity-backed and hybrid buyers accounted for roughly three-quarters of trailing-twelve-month deals (80% in Q2 2026); 37 of the 68 unique buyers in the first half of 2026 were private-equity-backed; and just ten firms accounted for 45% of all first-half deals — led by BroadStreet Partners (37) and Inszone (33).[5]
Then set the supply against that absorption rate. OPTIS counts 25,000 to 30,000 agencies nationally and says the majority are “very small and will have to be sold eventually.”[6] A market clearing ~650 deals a year against that backlog means the small end of the market will remain structurally underserved for decades. For a small Florida owner, the practical translation: the buyers with the most capital are the least likely to call you back — not because your book is bad, but because their model requires scale.
The Big “I” Agency Universe Study — the independent channel's census — counts 39,000 independent P&C agencies in 2024, down from 40,000 in 2022, and reports that one in three agencies expects an ownership change within the next five years.[7] The 2022 edition put the average principal age at 54, with 17% of principals 66 or older; more than 8 in 10 agencies report having a perpetuation plan, but those plans lean heavily on family succession[8] — and a plan that depends on a child wanting the business is a hope, not a plan.
The arithmetic of §2 and §3 together is this report's central finding: a decade-long seller wave is arriving into the thinnest buyer market in ten years, and the thinness is concentrated at exactly the small end where most Florida agencies live.
No single force has reshaped Florida personal-lines books more in the past three years than the shrinking of Citizens Property Insurance Corporation. From a peak of roughly 1.41 million policies in October 2023,[10] Citizens ended 2025 at 395,337 — after its depopulation program moved more than 546,000 policies to private carriers in 2025 alone (on top of 428,000+ in 2024) — and stood at 266,093 policies as of August 28, 2026, a further 33% net decline in 2026 year-to-date.[9] [10] The book that remains is 98.4% personal residential.[9] Takeout rounds already approved by the Office of Insurance Regulation run through December 2026, with nine-plus transactions scheduled from carriers including American Integrity, Slide, Southern Oak, Florida Peninsula, and Praxis.[14]
| County | Citizens policies in force (7/31/26) | Of which personal multiperil |
|---|---|---|
| Duval | 2,141 | 1,870 |
| St. Johns | 1,109 | 893 |
| Clay | 538 | 537 |
| Nassau | 518 | 361 |
Source: Citizens Detail by County report, reported period 07-31-2026.[9]
For an agency owner, the depopulation wave cuts two ways. Policies leaving Citizens for takeout carriers can leave your book if you don't hold the assuming carrier's appointment — which is why buyers price a Citizens-heavy book on its documented takeout history, not its current revenue. But the same wave means the era of Citizens-concentration risk is genuinely ending: with the residual market down to under 2% of Florida's homeowners multi-peril policies (§5), the discount that buyers apply for Citizens exposure is shrinking with it.
The Office of Insurance Regulation's own data describes a market that has turned. Since the 2022–2023 legislative reforms, 20 new property and casualty insurers have entered Florida, bringing more than $850 million in new capital (OIR, May 2026); the July 2026 Property Insurance Stability Report counts 21 new companies approved specifically to write residential property.[11] [12] In the latest reported filing year, OIR logged 44 homeowners rate-decrease filings and 48 zero-increase filings, and 51 Florida counties saw average premium decreases in the year to March 2026.[12]
Citizens' own 2026 personal-lines rates tell the same story: its board proposed a 2.6% average statewide decrease, and OIR ultimately approved an 8.7% average cut, with more than 330,000 policyholders seeing decreases.[13] The voluntary market now writes 98.07% of Florida's 4.16 million homeowners multi-peril policies and 96.87% of condo policies.[12] Underneath it: a pooled combined ratio of 83% in 2025 (insurers earning real underwriting profit), risk-adjusted reinsurance price reductions of 15–25% for nearly half of Florida insurers, and zero insolvency referrals since March 2023.[12] The exception proving the rule is commercial residential (condo association) coverage, where Citizens' 2026 rates still rose 7.2–14.4%.[15]
For sellers, softening is double-edged: commission revenue per policy drifts down as premiums fall, but retention gets easier, re-shopping produces wins, and — most importantly for a sale — a stabilizing market makes your renewal book more predictable, which is precisely what a buyer pays for. A book's value depends less on where rates are than on whether its clients stay.
There is no public exchange for agency books, so honest valuation data at the small end barely exists. What follows is the buying framework this report's publisher uses and publishes — a first-party benchmark, disclosed as such, consistent with the national context that agencies broadly have traded at revenue multiples that vary with line mix, retention, and transferability.
| Book profile | Base multiple of annual commission revenue |
|---|---|
| Mostly personal lines | 1.7x |
| Mixed personal + small commercial | 1.85x |
| Mostly commercial | 2.0x |
| Micro-books (under $100,000 revenue), any mix | 0.8x–1.2x |
The base then moves on four verifiable facts: retention (95%+ earns a premium of +0.20x; below 85% costs −0.35x), Citizens share (over 30% of the book costs −0.25x; documented takeout history shrinks the discount), carrier transferability (a book concentrated in 1–3 appointments carries −0.15x of transfer risk), and revenue quality (recurring renewal commission over new-business commission). Micro-books price lower for a structural reason, not a punitive one: the fixed costs of any deal — legal, diligence, transition — are the same at $60,000 of revenue as at $600,000, and owner-dependence peaks at exactly the size where every client knows the owner personally.
The full framework, with the worked arithmetic, is published at atesariskadvisors.com/blog/florida-insurance-agency-valuation-2026 — and the interactive version runs at atesariskadvisors.com/sell-your-agency.
Small-agency deals do not depend on private-equity capital. The SBA 7(a) program explicitly lists “changes of ownership (complete or partial)” as an eligible use, with a $5 million maximum, guarantees of 85% (loans to $150,000) or 75% (above), and maturities up to 10 years for business-acquisition loans.[16] Rate caps are set off the prime rate by loan-size tier (from base + 3.0% on larger loans to base + 6.5% on the smallest); with prime at 6.75% as of late August 2026,[17] financed acquisition costs sit well below where they were during the 2023–24 rate peak. In practice, the smallest book purchases are usually structured more simply still — cash at close plus a retention-tied earn-out or seller note — but the SBA channel is what lets a local buyer compete with institutional capital on cash at close for mid-six-figure books.
The 2026 picture, assembled from the state's and the industry's own numbers: a growing population of very small agencies (§1), an aging ownership base with one agency in three expecting to change hands within five years (§3), a national buyer market at decade lows and concentrated in ten firms that do not operate at the small end (§2), a residual-market unwind that is de-risking Florida personal-lines books in real time (§4), and a rate environment that has officially softened (§5). For owners, the strategic conclusion writes itself: the value of a small Florida book will be decided less by the market and more by the book's own retention, documentation, and carrier transferability — the things an owner can still improve in the two or three renewal cycles before a sale. Owners who start early sell on their own timeline. Owners who start at the deadline take the market as they find it.
About this report. Published annually by Atesa Risk Advisors, a Jacksonville-based independent insurance agency (Florida 2-20) that buys Florida agencies and books of business under $1 million in revenue — directly and confidentially, against the published framework in §6. To join the annual distribution list (this report, once a year, plus one check-in — nothing else), or to run your book through the valuation tool: atesariskadvisors.com/sell-your-agency · (904) 900-5063.
Every figure above was gathered from the primary source named below and independently re-verified against that source in August 2026. Sources are limited to government bodies, carriers, and named industry authorities; no agency blogs, comparison sites, or marketing aggregators were used. Census County Business Patterns counts establishments (locations) as of the March 12 reference week of the stated year and is published on a ~2-year lag; Citizens policy counts are point-in-time and change weekly; OPTIS Partners deal counts include only announced transactions. Nothing in this report is an offer, a valuation opinion, or legal, tax, or investment advice.