Growth beyond insurance
Acrisure’s next phase hinges on whether it can turn acquisitions and technology spending into stronger operating results. Brokerage revenue rose 3.4% to $3.75 billion in 2025, while gross revenue including business services reached $4.82 billion, up 5.2%. The gap between those figures reflects the growing contribution from services outside brokerage, but it also means the headline growth rates describe different parts of the business. S&P Global flagged narrower margins, higher leverage and weaker client retention in Acrisure’s largest North American retail unit. Growth is evident; the quality and cost of that growth are the harder questions.
CEO Greg Williams reported 5.1% organic revenue growth and a 32.7% margin for 2025. Insurance produced most of the growth, while business services contributed 18% of revenue. Williams expects that share to rise as Acrisure expands its services platform, a strategy that gives the company another source of revenue alongside brokerage. That mix can make the business less dependent on insurance sales alone, but the shift also makes execution more complex: services must contribute enough to justify the resources and integration work behind them.
The company’s gross revenue, including business services, reached $4.82 billion, up 5.2% from the prior year. Personal lines account for about 10% of brokerage revenue, providing another piece of the business mix. Acrisure ranked No. 10 among the world’s largest brokers in Business Insurance’s latest ranking, down two spots from the previous year. Rankings offer a useful measure of scale, but they don’t show whether that scale is translating into better margins or stronger client retention.
Its push into adjacent services accelerated with the $1.1 billion purchase of Global Payments’ Heartland Payroll Services. Payroll and human capital management add to an offering that includes employee benefits, cybersecurity and managed IT for small and mid-sized businesses. These services can give brokers more ways to serve existing clients, while creating additional work to coordinate across products and teams. Acrisure says it has completed about 1,000 acquisitions since its founding in 2005. That history helps explain the company’s breadth, but the accumulated businesses still need to operate as a coherent platform.
MarshBerry CEO John Wepler said Acrisure bought aggressively when interest rates were low, then shifted toward integration as rates rose. He cited its small and mid-market client base, advisory-led services, international operations and equity retained by partners from acquired firms as sources of diversification. Operations outside the U.S. generate about 17% of revenue, he said. That spread may reduce dependence on any single market or service line, though it doesn’t remove the operating demands of bringing acquired firms together.
AI savings and operating pressure
Acrisure plans to cut about 2,250 jobs, or 11% of its workforce, through next year as AI reduces manual work. The company had already announced a separate reduction of 400 employees in October. Williams said tasks that once took days or weeks can now take minutes. Those time savings may be meaningful, but they’re only part of the financial case: Acrisure still has to convert faster work into sustained productivity while maintaining service and retaining clients.
Acrisure is also applying predictive modeling to cross-selling, an effort to identify where its existing services may fit client needs. In October, Williams hired Ben Funk from Palantir to serve as chief technology and AI officer. The financial test will be whether automation and the broader technology program improve productivity enough to offset implementation costs and support margins. Technology spending can create efficiencies, but the benefits may arrive later than the costs. Here’s the thing: an ambitious program is not the same as a measurable improvement in operating performance.
In April, S&P changed Acrisure’s outlook to negative from stable while affirming its B rating. Analyst Julie Herman attributed higher leverage largely to narrower margins. S&P estimated that Acrisure’s EBITDA margin fell about six percentage points in 2025 to 21%, among the lowest for brokers it rates. That figure is below Williams’ 32.7% estimate because S&P applies its own more conservative methodology. The difference matters when comparing the figures: they reflect distinct calculations, so they shouldn’t be treated as interchangeable readings of the same margin.
Herman also cited weaker client retention in North American retail, Acrisure’s largest revenue unit, which is still being integrated. Retention is a useful test of whether clients find the combined business valuable enough to stay, especially when a company is changing its operations and product mix. A weaker result in the largest unit can weigh on the broader growth story even as other parts of the business expand. Herman said the company’s growth and operating plans could strengthen its competitive position, organic growth and margins over time. That’s a possibility, not a result already established by the reported figures.
Williams acknowledged that acquisitions, integration and technology investment have weighed on leverage and margins. He said productivity gains take time to emerge, but the work is progressing to plan. Acrisure has slowed its acquisition pace and is concentrating more on debt reduction as it considers a potential public listing, though Williams left room for deals that meet the company’s criteria. This is more significant than it looks: pausing to integrate can test whether the company’s operating model works across the businesses it has assembled. And this is the part most people overlook: acquisition volume alone doesn’t show whether those businesses are improving the economics of the whole company.
What to watch next
The near-term measure of progress will be whether integration and automation translate into better retention and margins. If you’re working in this space, the distinction between reported growth and operating improvement is worth keeping in view: Acrisure has posted growth, while S&P has identified pressure in margins, leverage and retention. The company’s own margin figure and S&P’s estimate also tell different stories because they use different methodologies. A clearer assessment will depend on how those indicators develop as integration continues.
That said, the strategy has a plausible logic. A broader set of services may deepen client relationships, and automation may reduce the time required for routine tasks. But both claims need to show up in the operating results. For Acrisure, the challenge is to make a large, acquired platform easier to run while reducing debt and sustaining organic growth. The next phase, then, is about proof. Shorter processing times alone won’t settle the question.