Driving growth can feel chaotic – and is often a collection of reactive decisions, missed opportunities, and constant guesswork. But when you leverage data and analytics, you get clarity: well-defined goals, aligned teams, and measurable progress.
Scrutinizing your firm’s growth performance is increasingly important as the rate environment has turned. In fact, the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers (CIAB) recently reported that premium increases across all lines are slowing to just 1.6% and even some commercial property premiums dipping by 0.2%.1 While a softer market is a welcome relief for many insurance buyers (and often, frontline employees) – it can have a substantial impact on a firm’s book of business. In fact, MarshBerry analysis shows that without the boost from the hard rate environment and rising exposures, “real organic growth” for the average insurance agency/broker was just 2.7%.
MarshBerry recommends utilizing a few Critical Performance Indicators (CPIs) to turn chaos into confidence. These three ratios can help a firm measure growth and benchmark against peers, to help identify opportunities for improvement:
- Sales Velocity
- New Business Dollars per Production Person
- Net Unvalidated Producer Pay (NUPP)
1. Sales Velocity
What’s a more meaningful measurement than organic growth? Sales velocity. Sales velocity is like a growth speedometer – it measures the amount of the current year’s new business as a percentage of prior years’ commissions and fees. Sales velocity certainly contributes toward a firm’s organic growth, and measuring new business with such scrutiny can indicate how sustainable the growth truly is.
2025 Regional MAX Performer winner Starke Agency is in the 91st percentile of sales velocity according to MarshBerry’s proprietary financial management system Perspectives for High Performance (PHP) database, which equates to over 23% new business rate. President of Starke, Kyle Drumwright, attributes this aggressive growth toward a multi-pronged approach. First, the firm is hiring talent from outside the insurance industry to encourage new book growth as opposed to inheriting and retaining existing business. In addition, these new producers likely have experience in markets with larger average account sizes. Because of this experience, they avoid applying the same high service standards deployed with VIP clients to much smaller accounts. Lastly, Starke has hired account executives. This position is more senior than an account manager and does everything a producer does but doesn’t pursue new business. The producer can then focus on obtaining larger accounts instead of just renewals and client volume.
2. New Business Dollars Per Production Person
The success of each individual producer is essential to the firm’s overall organic growth. Calculating the average new business per production person can help set smarter sales goals, establish minimum expectations, evaluate efficiency, and hold non-performers accountable.
Also keep in mind, not all producers should have the same goals – they should be individualized for every level of performance and progressive over time.
For 2025 National MAX Performer winner Associated Agencies, those goals are a part of an accountability culture where those delivering below average results are guided and coached to improve. More specifically, President of Associated Josh Herz recalls only two producers in his firm achieving $250k of new business revenue annually when the firm joined the MarshBerry Connect membership over ten years ago, but today over fifteen producers achieve that new business volume and over five write over half a million dollars of new business every year. When asked how Associated was able to move upstream, Josh emphasized the importance of each producer adopting a ‘major’ and ‘minor’ niche that satisfies their existing markets and minimum account thresholds to focus on. To walk the talk, both Josh and CEO Skip Schryaer still hold themselves accountable toward these high new business expectations as well.
3. Net Unvalidated Producer Pay (NUPP)
Investing in producers without a book offers substantial rewards for insurance brokerage firms. Fresh talent can bring fresh energy and excitement to a firm. Net Unvalidated Producer Pay (NUPP) is a metric used to measure a firm’s investment in newer producers, such as compensation, training, or mentoring. While greener producers take time to reach top-performer status, they don’t have current books of business so they can focus on building new client relationships and expanding into untapped or underserved markets. High revenue generating firms are better incentivizing producers to focus on new business and lesser on retention, meaning firms that increase NUPP often perform better than the average firm.
Firms like 2025 Regional MAX Performer winner Dillingham Insurance rely on unvalidated producers to keep up with their firm’s 15% year-over-year new business goals regardless of how hard or soft the market is. President and CEO Jason Willeford shared an analogy about this momentum. “It’s kind of like riding a bicycle uphill. If you stop [investing in new producers] you’re kind of in trouble, you know? You start going backwards, so you have to keep churning.” (Learn more from this video interview with Dillingham Insurance here.)
It’s inevitable that senior producers will retire or leave the firm, and you’ll need a pipeline of production talent to continue to drive growth without a hitch. Measuring your firm’s investment in unvalidated producers can help uncover if leadership is properly supporting that transition, motivating new hires to write more new business, and retaining high performing unvalidated producers. What are you doing with all that profit if you’re not reinvesting in the people who bring in the bucks?
Another surprising stat – industry benchmarks show that producers under the age of 45 years old are generating more new business comparative to their older peers. This isn’t ageism, but instead shows that investing in younger talent who are not burdened by an existing book of business will yield stronger sales velocity. Again, Jason Willeford recalls an announcement at a semi-annual sales meeting that Dillingham producers under 40 sold more in the total book of business than the older group of producers, “so that’s when the trash talking began,” and resulted in healthy internal competition.
Measuring your firm’s growth isn’t fundamentally different from tracking progress toward any other meaningful goal whether it’s losing weight, saving for retirement, or training for a marathon. In each case, success starts with clarity: knowing where you are today, defining where you want to be, and consistently measuring along the way. Without measurement, goals remain aspirations. With it, they become achievable milestones. Growth isn’t accidental– it’s intentional, and measurement is the compass that keeps you on course.
Are you ready to Connect?
You can learn even more about how to take advantage of CPIs by becoming a MarshBerry Connect member. Connect members gain access to exclusive market intelligence as well as an invaluable peer-to-peer exchange network. To learn more about becoming a MarshBerry Connect member, click here.
