Sell a Specialty Insurance & MGA Wholesale business

Owner-operator specialty insurance & mga wholesale businesses trade at 5x–8x SDE for typical $500K–$3M SDE ranges. At $3M+ EBITDA scale the same operators sell at 9x–15x EBITDA. Multiples in this category are ebitda-based and data-sourced from InsuranceJournal Q4 2024 + Cerulli Associates RIA M&A 2025 + Optis Partners. Where you land in the range is driven by growth trajectory, revenue mix, customer concentration, and management-team depth beyond the owner.

Ryan Specialty (NYSE: RYAN), Amwins, CRC Group, Truist Insurance Holdings (Stone Point + Clayton Dubilier & Rice), and Brown & Brown drive wholesale/MGA consolidation. Active buyer archetypes in financial services include Aggregator / roll-up platform, Financial services PE, Internal succession. Which of these bids for your business depends on scale — sub-$1M SDE is typically individual or search-fund territory, $1-3M SDE opens up PE platforms and strategics, and $3M+ EBITDA gets full LMM buyer attention.

Specialty insurance wholesalers and MGAs (managing general agents) with binding-authority contracts, program-business focus (construction, transportation, professional liability, cyber), and diversified carrier panels trade at premium multiples that outpace retail brokerage. Beyond the industry-specific factor, the universal drivers in financial services are recurring commission or aum revenue (not one-time transactional); client retention rate (>95% for premium multiples); book of business quality (commercial vs personal, hnw vs mass market).

MGA valuations are sensitive to carrier-panel stability and any single-carrier concentration; buyers scrutinize your top-3-carrier share and any prospective delegated-authority changes. Buyers in this category also standardly scrutinize producer / advisor departure with book of business and carrier or custodian concentration. Addressing these in advance in a well-prepared CIM materially reduces retrade risk during diligence.

Typical transaction range for specialty insurance & mga wholesale is $1.5M–$80M in annual revenue. Below that, buyer pool narrows to individual and small-search-fund. Above that, PE platforms and strategics dominate. NAICS code 524298 — buyers screen by NAICS in most deal sources.

From the day you engage a broker to close, expect 6–12 months for a well-prepared business in financial services. The prep work — financial cleanup, addbacks documentation, key-employee retention agreements, real estate lease sorting — is where 3-6 months of the timeline hides. Starting that early is what separates a full-multiple exit from a discounted one.