The weather may have warmed up during May, but mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity during the month has remained cool. Following a relatively lively April, May saw a return to the form that has persisted for most of the past eighteen months. There were seven new deals announced during the month, involving five different buyers. Furthermore, they were all relatively small deals. Only two involved a transaction involving a target with 10 or more staff, and none employed more than 20 people. Year-to-date (YTD) deal volume remains well below their level at the end of May 2025, as 2026 shapes up to be a second successive year of depressed sector M&A, against a backdrop of increasingly difficult trading for many brokers and MGAs (managing general agents).
M&A Market Update
With only seven new deals in May, one less than in May 2025, year-on-year 2026 M&A volumes have fallen further behind 2025, which was of course the slowest year for sector M&A since 2017. The 37 new deals YTD in 2026 is 17% below the deal count at the same point last year, and 24% lower than the long-term average after the first five months of the year. May’s deals were also all at the smaller end of the scale, and collectively the seven acquired firms employ fewer than 50 staff, which will correspond to well below £10 million in income. Six of the firms acquired were commercial or community brokers, and one was an MGA.
JMG Group, which as the most active UK consolidator in 2025 in terms of volume of deals, was behind three of the transactions in May, and may well again end the year with a higher deal count than any other buyer. They have remained consistently active in M&A, completing mainly smaller transactions at a time when many of the most prolific, mainly private equity-backed (PE) acquirers of the past few years have either greatly slowed down or temporarily ceased making UK acquisitions. This reduced level of consolidator activity is apparent when looking at the proportion of PE and PE-backed transactions over time. On a YTD basis only 43% of deals have involved PE capital, the lowest level in ten years.
If PE-backed consolidators are currently sitting on their hands, then who is buying? In many cases, the answer is privately held businesses. These buyers, however, are generally not stepping into the consolidators’ shoes; they don’t have the capital or resources to do so. These deals tend to be small and are often local tie-ups between brokers, perhaps driven by a retirement or between an Appointed Representative (AR) and its principal firm. In any given year these sorts of deals are always going on. Since 2016, there have been an average of 29 deals a year involving privately held buyers. More than 85% of these have a deal value estimated to be below £5m. In 2026 so far there have been 10, suggesting activity at this end of the market is broadly holding up, perhaps aided by some of the networks these firms are often part of and which are increasingly willing to help support such deals. In parallel, two of the largest privately held broking firms, The Broker Investment Group and Adler Fairways, have remained active and become increasingly relevant during a period in which many other consolidators have slowed down.
As MarshBerry noted last month, the proportion of UK deals involving specialty (MGA and Wholesale, including Lloyd’s brokers) is running above the long-term average, reflecting the continued appetite for such businesses. The same trend is being seen in both the U.S. and Europe. This also factors into the overall level of cross-border M&A and number of genuine new entrants coming to the UK: overseas buyers are involved in a large proportion of all M&A, and more than two thirds of all deals where the overseas acquirer is entering the UK for the first time involves a specialty target. The specialty segment is increasingly international. There have already been several such cross-border deals in 2026 and there was another in May, with Australian MGA ATC Insurance Solution acquiring Frontier Global Underwriting (see below). UK sellers of specialty business need to think globally, as the most relevant buyers may well be located overseas.
Notable Transactions (May 2026):
- Australian MGA ATC Insurance Solutions, which is backed by UK-based investor B.P. Marsh, acquired Frontier Global Underwriting, a specialty Financial Lines MGA and London Market wholesale broking group with operations in London and Sydney.
- JMG Group demonstrated that it remains highly active at a time when many other PE-backed consolidators have become more cautious, announcing three new deals during May* and building out its presence in the Midlands, with deals for Jukes Insurance Brokers in Bromsgrove, RP Lovatt in Banbury, and Nene Valley Insurance Practice in Northampton.
- Adler Fairways, which took minority investment from Intact in 2025, continued its run of recent acquisitions with a deal for W B Baxter, a Chartered broker and Willis Network member in Essex.
Other Transactions (May 2026):
- South Wales Insurance Brokers announced that it had combined with Fisher Insure, also in South Wales.
- Renata Group, a commercial broker in Dorset, announced that it has acquired Abbot Insurance Consultants in Devon.
