Brown & Brown: insurance broker profile

Overview

Brown & Brown is a publicly traded insurance intermediary headquartered in Daytona Beach, Florida. Its January 2026 results release reported full-year 2025 total revenues of $5,902 million, including $5,763 million in commissions and fees, and its 2025 Form 10-K counts 22,888 employees worldwide at December 31, 2025: 14,531 in Retail and 7,905 in Specialty Distribution. J. Powell Brown is president and chief executive.

Business Insurance ranked Brown & Brown No. 5 among the world's largest brokers in its 2026 list, published June 26, 2026, with 2025 brokerage revenue of $5.76 billion, up 22.5%. The top five in that ranking were Marsh, Aon, Arthur J. Gallagher, Willis Towers Watson and Brown & Brown. Brown & Brown says it "primarily operates as an agent or broker not assuming underwriting risks," in its 10-K, which means it does not bear underwriting losses.

History

The 10-K says J. Hyatt Brown led the predecessor corporation from 1961 to 1993 and was chief executive from 1993 to 2009; Powell Brown now leads the company. We did not find a founding year in the 10-K, so this profile does not state one. The company grew through a long series of retail agency acquisitions across the United States, then added wholesale brokerage and program businesses.

The largest step came in 2025 with Accession, described below, which added roughly 5,500 people and moved Brown & Brown up two places in the Business Insurance ranking.

Services

Brown & Brown reports two segments. Retail ($3,386 million, or 58.7%, of 2025 commissions and fees) sells property-casualty insurance and employee benefits through local offices. Specialty Distribution ($2,379 million, 41.3%) combines what used to be separate Programs and Wholesale Brokerage segments; they were merged in the third quarter of 2025. Wholesale brokers place hard-to-place business in the surplus lines market (see wholesale brokers and surplus lines placement: how hard risks get insured), while programs are niche coverages built for a class of business that the company administers for insurers (see program business: niche insurance through program administrators and Managing general agents (MGAs): what they are and what they mean for buyers). Accession's brokerage and wholesale brands (Risk Strategies and One80 Intermediaries) now sit under Brown & Brown.

Who it serves

Retail offices serve small and mid-sized businesses, individuals and employers. Its programs and wholesale units serve other brokers and agents, not end customers, which is useful to know if a quote comes back through a wholesaler: your retail agent may be placing the account with a Brown & Brown unit without your seeing the name. A commercial buyer should ask who is on the placement chain, how each party is compensated and whether a surplus lines broker is involved. See also how to choose a commercial insurance broker.

How it is paid

The 10-K says revenue is mainly commissions and fees. Commissions are a percentage of premium that the insurer pays; fees are agreed with the client, for example for services where no commission applies. Brown & Brown also receives profit-sharing contingent commissions, which insurers pay based on the profitability of business placed with them. In 2025 these totaled $255 million out of $5,763 million in commissions and fees, per the January 2026 results release. The 10-K also notes that contingent commissions expose the company to catastrophe losses, since a bad year for an insurer can mean a smaller payout. Guaranteed supplemental commissions are not named in the sections of the 10-K we reviewed. The overview of these models is in how commercial insurance brokers get paid.

Recent deals

• Accession (RSC Topco, Inc.): announced June 10, 2025, at about $9.83 billion in what Yahoo Finance and Reuters called a cash-and-stock deal, with roughly $1.3 billion of Brown & Brown stock going to sellers, including about $250 million to Kelso. The company's own release dated August 1, 2025 reported the completion; the 10-K places the deal in the third quarter of 2025. Accession is the holding company for Risk Strategies, a specialty brokerage, and One80 Intermediaries, a wholesaler and program manager. Brown & Brown expected the deal to add about $1.7 billion of annual revenue.
• 2025 volume: the 10-K says the company added nearly 5,794 teammates through 43 acquisitions in 2025, a count that includes Accession. A trade summary of the results call reported about $1.8 billion in annual revenue from those deals. We did not verify the individual smaller deals.

Our profile of Risk Strategies covers the brand as a separate business. The wider pattern is in private equity and the consolidation of insurance brokers.

Strengths and weaknesses

Brown & Brown combines a large local-agency network with wholesale and program capacity, which lets it offer both access to retail clients and a route to surplus lines markets. The January 2026 release reported a 2.8% organic revenue decline in the fourth quarter of 2025, so recent growth has come mainly from acquisitions.

• Strengths: retail footprint plus wholesale and program businesses; scale since Accession; disclosure of contingent commissions in its filings.
• Weaknesses: integration of the largest deal in its history; fourth-quarter organic revenue declined 2.8% in 2025; dependence on profit-sharing commissions that fluctuate with insurer results.

How to contact Brown & Brown