Median multiples held at 11.4x. The sub-$5M revenue band cleared 10.2x. Both numbers should reframe how you plan the next 24 months.
MarshBerry published its Q4 2025 multiples report Friday and there are five things in it that should change how an agency principal between $2 and $25 million in revenue plans the next two years. First, the median multiple held at 11.4x trailing EBITDA. The narrative was that 2025 was going to compress; it did not. Second, sub-$5 million revenue agencies cleared a median 10.2x — up from 9.4x in Q4 2024. The smaller-book band is no longer the value band; the gap to the mid-market median has narrowed from 2.0x to roughly 1.2x in 12 months. Third, producer-retention earnouts now appear in 47 percent of reported deals, up from 18 percent a year ago. The structural shift we covered in Issue 2 is now the dominant pattern. Fourth, the buyer-pool concentration thesis weakened. The top-five aggregators closed 38 percent of deals by count, down from 46 percent — meaning more capital is competing on each transaction, which is part of why multiples held. Fifth, the geographic dispersion widened. The premium for coastal commercial books compressed; the premium for inland producer-led books expanded. The implication for your succession math is direct. The number an advisor walks in with is now plausibly higher than the number you have been planning against, particularly if you run a producer-led structure in an inland geography. Read the cornerstone we updated this week before your next valuation call.
Premium multiple at the top of the producer-led band. MMA's earnout structure: 25 percent holdback against a five-producer retention schedule with restricted-stock vesting at 18 months. Northpoint's principal stays as regional president for 24 months. The MarshBerry data point this deal validates: producer-led mid-market books are clearing premium multiples.
Source: MMA press release Mar 24 2026
Inland producer-led book in a fast-growing metro. Higginbotham's first Texas deal of the year. Earnout: 30 percent holdback against producer retention. The principal stays as regional manager. Structurally identical to the Hub-Stanton transaction from Issue 2; the pattern is now the norm.
Source: Higginbotham announcement
Coastal commercial book at the lower end of the band — the geographic dispersion the MarshBerry data flagged is visible in this deal specifically. Alera's earnout retains the producer-retention structure but at 25 percent holdback rather than 30. Worth tracking whether Alera moves to 30 percent on the next coastal sub-$5M deal.
Source: Alera Group announcement
Expanded appetite — Inland small commercial — Mountain West (Q2 reaffirmed)
Travelers reaffirmed the Mountain West loosening we flagged in Issue 3 and extended the appetite to artisan-contractor classes specifically. Two regional underwriters confirmed the binding authority widened a second time in mid-March. The reinsurance softening from Issue 4 is now flowing through to primary appetite faster than the standard two-quarter lag — earlier than expected.
Sources: Travelers Mountain West appetite letter Mar 2026 · Regional underwriter (anonymous, requested per editorial policy)
Updated agency profitability scorecard — producer continuity weighting
Cincinnati joined Chubb in increasing the producer-continuity weighting in the 2026 contingent calculation. The two largest standard-market carriers in the independent-agency channel are now signaling the same thing: production-team relationships, not principal relationships. Operator implication: a producer departure that previously cost the agency a book now also costs the agency on the contingent.
Source: Cincinnati 2026 agency scorecard guidance
Veruna released a multiples-tracking module that pulls reported deal data into the AMS for benchmarking against your own EBITDA, organic growth, and producer-retention numbers. The module reads against the MarshBerry and Sica Fletcher data feeds and updates quarterly. Two principals tell us it is the first benchmarking tool that doesn't require a separate spreadsheet. We reserve full judgment until we see the data-feed reliability hold across two quarterly updates.
We'll have a deeper review next month.
Source: Veruna Q1 2026 release notes
TheBindBrief — Cornerstone Guide
Updated with the Q4 2025 data. The methodology section is the same; the multiple ranges in Section 2 are now Q4 2025 current. If you're getting valued in the next 12 months, this is the operator-perspective frame to use against whatever number your advisor brings you.
Read it ↗