Open numbers
What revenue per employee do independent agencies run?
The 2025 Big I and Reagan Consulting Best Practices Study put revenue per employee at $228,321 for top agencies. What it means and how much it varies.
What the published numbers say
Revenue per employee reached $228,321 in the 2025 Best Practices Study, the joint benchmarking study run by the Big I and Reagan Consulting. The study defines it as total agency commission and fee revenue divided by full-time equivalent employees, and treats it as the cleanest single read on operational efficiency.
Big I and Reagan Consulting, 2025 Best Practices Study release · 2025
That $228,321 figure is a top-performer number, not an all-agency average. The 2025 study drew from 349 agencies that qualified as Best Practices agencies out of more than 1,100 nominated across the country. Read it as a stretch target for a well-run shop, not the typical result.
Revenue per employee swings hard with agency size, line mix, and commission rates. An earlier Big I and Reagan Consulting study put it across a $135,000 to $257,000 range depending on the agency's revenue band, so there is no one right figure that applies to every book.
IIANC, Blowing Up the Benchmarks (2022 Best Practices Study) · 2022
Beware generic industry revenue-per-employee stats. Figures built from publicly traded companies run far higher: the insurance brokerage industry posted about $396,452 per employee on a trailing-twelve-month basis as of Q1 2026, because global brokers like the large publicly listed firms skew the pool. That number does not describe a Main Street independent agency.
CSIMarket, Insurance Brokerage industry efficiency (publicly traded firms) · 2026
How to read this
Compute your own before you compare. Take total commission and fee revenue for the last full year and divide by full-time equivalent headcount. Decide up front whether owners and part-timers count, and count them the same way every year so the trend is honest.
Treat the Best Practices $228,321 as a top-performer figure, not the norm. It comes from 349 hand-picked top agencies, so landing under it does not mean you are broken. Your own year-over-year direction matters more than any single headline number.
Size changes what good looks like. The 2022 range of $135,000 to $257,000 shows a figure that is strong for a small agency can be soft for a large brokerage. Compare yourself to agencies your size and mix, not to the aggregate.
Caveats
- Revenue per employee is a proxy, not a verdict. A high number can mean lean, well-run staffing, or it can mean an under-serviced book heading for a retention problem. The metric alone cannot tell you which.
- The Best Practices figures describe top performers who qualified for the study, not the average agency down the street.
- Public-company figures like the $396,452 above include giant global brokers and should not be read as an independent-agency benchmark.
- How you count full-time equivalents (owners, part-timers, shared service staff) moves the number a lot. Two agencies with identical books can report very different figures just from counting differently.
The Relay number
Revenue per employee is set in part by how much manual re-keying each account carries. Relay's live tools (Document Parsing, ACORD Generation, and Ask Relay) take some of that clerical work off licensed staff. AI Quoting is a Research Preview, and Relay publishes its carrier-portal automation benchmark openly, including methodology and limitations. Any Relay number comes from that page, not this one. Read the benchmark →
Common questions
Is $228,321 the average independent agency's revenue per employee?
No. It is the 2025 Best Practices Study figure, drawn from 349 top-performing agencies selected from more than 1,100 nominated. It is a top-performer benchmark, not an all-agency average.
How do I calculate revenue per employee for my agency?
Divide total commission and fee revenue by full-time equivalent employees. Decide once whether owners and part-time staff count, then apply the same rule every year so your trend is comparable.
Every number on this page carries a source. Updated 2026-07-11. See how we source what we publish.
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