What retention rate should an independent agency expect?
Measure client retention and revenue retention separately. Use published account-rounding evidence with care and build a useful renewal baseline for your agency.
What the published numbers say
MarshBerry’s 2025 account-rounding article reports retention of 77.1% for single-policy clients and 84.7% for clients holding at least five policies. These describe different groups in its analysis, not a universal agency target or proof that adding a policy causes retention.
How to read this
For client retention, start with a defined group of clients at the beginning of the period. Count how many of that same group remain at the end. New clients do not belong in that denominator.
Track revenue retention separately using agency revenue from the starting group. State whether you include expansion, rate changes, and additional policies. Premium retention and agency revenue retention are not interchangeable.
Separate a policy rewrite from losing a relationship. A client remarketed from one carrier to another may remain with your agency. Your report should make that visible.
Review losses by reason and tenure. A service delay, a market withdrawal, and a client closing their business point to different actions. Use the reason to prioritize follow-up, not just a single aggregate percentage.
Caveats
- Published groups may differ in size, mix, tenure, and definition. Their percentages should not become an automatic target for your book.
- Account rounding is an observed association in the cited article. It is not evidence that every additional policy improves retention by a fixed amount.
- Choose a cohort and a consistent period so new-business growth does not hide departing clients.
Evaluate the work in your agency
Use Relay to gather the documents and questions needed for a renewal review. Then measure whether the team can get to those conversations earlier. We do not claim a guaranteed retention increase. Build your own baseline →
Common questions
What should our retention target be?
Start with your own consistently defined baseline. Segment the book, understand the reasons for lost relationships, and set an improvement target tied to the work your team can influence.
Does moving a client to another carrier count as a loss?
For agency client retention, a client who remains with the agency is retained. A carrier-policy retention report may count the same transaction differently. Label the measure.
Every number on this page carries a source. Updated 2026-09-05. See how we source what we publish.
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