Worldwide, total fees and commissions earned from insurance broking activity in 2022 were worth over $151.4bn, up from around $137bn in 2021, according to Insuramore, a provider of marketing services focusing on the insurance sector.
This increase is equivalent to a growth rate of almost 10.5% without adjusting for inflation, but closer to 2% as an inflation-adjusted measure.
According to Insuramore, in 2022, this market is estimated to have broken down between around £68.8bn due to commercial P&C (non-life) retail broking, $14.6bn to private P&C (non-life) retail broking, $50bn to employee benefits plus life and health insurance retail broking, $6.4bn to reinsurance broking and $11.6bn to wholesale broking.
Each of the segments registered a double-digit growth rate during the year apart from employee benefits plus life and health insurance retail broking.
Without adjusting for inflation, the top 20 broking groups together achieved an even higher aggregate growth rate of 11.7% albeit this was driven in part by M&A activity, analysts noted.
In terms of the value of its total broking revenues worldwide, Marsh McLennan ranked first among broking groups in 2022 and followed by Aon, WTW, Gallagher and Acrisure.
Heading the commercial P&C insurance retail broking segment is Marsh McLennan; the private P&C insurance retail broking segment is led by HUB; employee benefits activity plus retail broking of life and health cover by WTW; reinsurance broking by Aon; and wholesale insurance broking by Amwins.
“Overall, the top 20 groups are believed to have controlled 51.5% of total global broking fees and commissions in 2022 and the top 300 groups for 83.2%. Relative to the equivalent figures computed for 2021 (namely, a respective 50.7% and 79.4%), this shows that there has been some consolidation in the market structure; this is due both to M&A activity and to the strengthening of the US dollar against most global currencies during 2022, causing US-based groups to achieve a higher weighting within the worldwide ranking,” said analysts.
According to the report, among the 300 groups the US is the headquarters for 141 of them, France for 29, the UK for 27, Canada for 17 and India for 13. The rest of the world account for the remaining 73.
Analysts concluded: “Looking ahead, it will be apposite to see whether a continuing stream of M&A activity causes the worldwide market to consolidate further in 2023 or if the dynamic growth of some smaller and medium-sized competitors causes the share of the top 20 groups to hold at just over a half of global broking revenues.
