The Best Insurance Networks and Alliances in the USA | 5-Star Networks and Alliances

Swiss Re’s Sigma report states, “US tariffs are likely to increase insurance claims severity in the US, and may dampen insurance demand, especially in the US and for specialty lines tied to economic activity (i.e., credit and surety, marine, and engineering).”

This makes it a logical decision for agents to join networks and take strategic shelter, along with other well-recognized benefits such as brand recognition, training resources, and consulting services.

Insurance Business America’s 2025 data shows that access to more insurance companies and products is the biggest motivating factor for agents to join networks (88.3 percent of agents in 2025, up from 75 percent in 2024 identified it as their top reason). This again highlights the turbulence agents across the US are feeling, and a collective wish to remain in a strong position to deliver the products their clients need.

IBA surveyed agents nationwide to gain their insights into the capabilities of networks and alliances. Respondents rated their networks across 10 criteria including marketing support, access to niche markets, and vendor discounts, with the leading performers awarded 5-Star status.

Cementing carrier relations

Strategic Agency Partners (SAP) has fostered close relationships with carriers helping agents even through challenging times. The firm has earned $300 million of aggregated premium from the zero it began with in 2020, along with a network of 36 agencies.

“This remains a relationship business,” says managing director John Tiene. “And so, while there is turbulence, our ability to work with our carrier partners who know us has been critical to maintaining the ability of our agents to continue to recruit new clients, get them placed, and take care of their existing clients. That partnership makes all the difference.” 

 

“The agent aggregates their premium up through the contract, there’s no loss ratio or penalties. Our job is to manage the book and the profitability on a macro level while the agent takes care of the clients”

John TieneStrategic Agency Partners

Another 5-Star winner, Smart Choice, has been working with carrier partners to understand how to avoid stress points.

“Over the past 12 to 18 months, we’ve been coming out of one of the hardest markets that the insurance industry has faced, so there were challenges, but also lots of opportunity, which we’re excited about,” says Ashley Wingate, executive vice president of sales and distribution.

Smart Choice has three verticals: 

• personal lines
  
   

• commercial lines
  
   

• express markets
  
   

And as a result, the company is wary of oversaturation. Wingate says, “We work with our carrier partners to see where they want to grow and be a little bit more surgical about that.”

The network has signed on over 1,400 new agencies over the past year, which follows eight years in succession of 1,000+ additions. Wingate attributes this to the close connections with carriers across the country and the ability to find attractive rates for agents.

“We’re able to negotiate top commission structures, top contingency bonuses with carrier partners, and a little less premium requirement,” he notes.

 

“For us to be successful, we want to have as many partners as we can that strategically are aligned

with us”

Ashley WingateSmart Choice

Having built firm connections with relevant carriers, Fortified, also a 5-Star network, has made its agents a priority for carriers. 

CEO Joe Craven highlights how property and excess liability continue to be challenges in the marketplace. However, Fortified’s profile enables it to deal with any external noise.

“The biggest benefit is from our size and the relationships that we have,” he says. “The underwriters know who we are. They’re going to put us at the top of the stack in many cases because of the volume that we send them. They know our profitability, so they typically want to work with us, knowing that they’re going to get the right accounts on the books.”

ISU Steadfast is active across the 51 jurisdictions and some carriers it works with have been unable to get adequate rates filed through the department of insurance over the last few years. This has meant ISU has moved a significant amount of business to intermediaries, wholesalers, MGAs, London, etc. But now the situation has reversed.

“My biggest challenge is, can I bring business back to the admitted carriers from the intermediaries?,” says CEO Dan McCarthy.

However, there has been no loss of focus on delivering for the network’s members.

“The goal is to help the agent protect their client with the best value in the marketplace. We make those carriers available so that when smaller agents need to price it against 20 carriers, they don’t have to go through 20 appointments,” adds McCarthy. “Instead, they can utilize the ISU Steadfast carrier inventory to compete against a middle market or larger agency.”

Flexibility 

One quarter of agents without networks surveyed by IBA in 2025 said that perceived loss of independence was their top reason for not joining a network. 

McCarthy highlights that agents prioritize autonomy, and this relates to why ISU Steadfast only chooses to do business with agents who demonstrate historic growth of 10–12 percent.

He explains, “An agent that becomes a member is 100-percent owned by that agency. We do not carry any ownership. Very little, if anything, is dictated to them, other than they have to pay us a fee every month.”

Agents can choose from ISU Steadfast’s wide-ranging service selection and tailor it to their needs, while a 30-day notice of departure allows them to opt out of their contract without fees.

 

“People don’t leave ISU Steadfast unless they sell their agency. If I look back over five years, I probably can find less than five that left for a reason other than they sold their agency”

Dan McCarthyISU Steadfast

Smart Choice leads with its accommodating approach contract, which is non-exclusive and one-year long with no fees, allowing agents to retain ownership of their book and benefit from top-tier commissions and bonuses. 

Wingate explains, “We’re getting a greater share of the new agencies that are coming on board, because they’re recognizing the risk to their business if they sign the wrong contract. Once you write a piece of business, we split commissions, but we have skin in the game together.”

Meanwhile, those joining Strategic Agency Partners benefit from a zero-commission partnership that emphasizes a profit-sharing system.

“We don’t touch commissions; the commissions go from the carrier to the agent. Agents need the commission because it’s what pays their bills,” explains Tiene. “They pay a small fee and they get a large chunk of their profit sharing. But because it’s aggregated, all our agents make more in profit-sharing contingency revenue than they ever could on their own.”

Understanding agents

The best networks have crafted a reciprocal model, where they adapt and hone their focus to what members want.

SAP spends time understanding its agents’ business; it explores things to discover if they are focused on certain niches or understand what carrier relationship could help them expand. 

“It really is one-on-one with the agency because every agency is a little different. We’re not a network that throws codes at an agent and goes, ‘Here’s more carriers to work with,’” says Tiene. “If there’s no alignment, then it’s not ever going to work.”

A common support system that SAP offers is for agency owners who are usually one of the largest producers of new business but have other managerial duties. This results in limited time and the network gives them a blueprint to take their agency to the next level. They remove impediments by taking on the administrative burden, allowing these agent owners to spend more time with clients.

Tiene says, “It’s amazing how quickly they can move along and scale, and it’s also our ability to bring resources that they can use to help them move forward.”

And he underlines how available they are to agents, no matter the situation.

“They can call us any time of the day or night if they’ve got a problem. Everybody’s got my cell phone and the numbers of our consultants, and we will handle it immediately.”

Fortified is aware of how agents are being impacted as previously it wasn’t very difficult to get an umbrella over $10 million.

 

“There should be and needs to be more than just a revenue benefit to our members. They should have an entire solution to help them run their agency on a day-to-day basis”

Joe CravenFortified

“Most of the carriers won’t write more than five now, and a lot of them won’t even write that. It’s because of the shocking verdicts that we’re seeing across the country and the pressure that’s putting on the carriers from a profitability standpoint,” says Craven.

Due to Fortified’s size and profitability, it can lean on partners to help write higher limits. 

Craven adds, “We also have great relationships with wholesalers that can help fill in the holes when we need more coverage.”

That size allows the network to roll the premium up, which gets agents into much better profit-sharing tiers. In many cases, Fortified even negotiates additional commission or additional overrides because the partner carriers see value from a profitability and growth standpoint. 

Fortified, with 70 members across 10 states, gives agents the advantage of being able to tap into a diverse knowledge base. Whatever issues may arise, there’s a good chance that one of their members has experience and can offer a solution.

“One of my favorite stories is we had an agent who came across a municipal airport and got the opportunity to quote it, but had never written any aviation. But we had another member who was an expert in writing aviation, and we were able to put those two together.”

To respond to its members’ needs, ISU has built its own commercial API rating engine similar to Tarmika and Semsee, which all its agents get access to. Due to working directly with carriers and writing billions of dollars with them, ISU wanted a direct relationship by building its own engine. 

McCarthy explains, “This year, we’ve done well over 10,000 transactions through our own API-based rating engine. We want to help our members protect their clients in the best way possible, so we put it into the engine that goes out to multiple commercial carriers, and then they can present the best value package back to their client.”

The system works by ISU’s rating engine feeding a packet to the carriers’ servers, which respond and give a quote or a declination. Currently, it has about 40 different product offerings.

“The next phase will be adding surplus lines transactions to our engine, which we’re working on so we can help an agent who’s working on a commercial client complete 75 or 80 percent of all their transactions,” says McCarthy. “The reason we’re doing that kind of thing is that our parent company, ISU Steadfast in Australia, did exactly this and is writing billions of dollars through its engines.”

Appreciative of the fee members can afford, ISU has tiered pricing. If agents have problems, they are connected with their local relationship manager, who acts as an ambassador for ISU. 

McCarthy says, “They coach or give them a way through the issue. If they cannot resolve it, then they move it up to the levels to another person within our organization who can solve it.”

Staying in contact

With a presence in 48 states, Smart Choice’s territorial managers regularly visit agents. 

Wingate says, “They and our state directors visit thousands of agents across the country, getting to know them personally, what their needs are, and how they can help.”

Training and education moved up IBA’s importance rankings in 2025 compared to 2024 (from sixth to second), demonstrating agents’ increased desire to make full use of a network’s capabilities.

Fortified offers a producer development program to foster integral skills that agencies can use to upgrade their producers’ abilities. 

“The agents can use a little bit of the program or all of it, depending on what they need,” Craven explains. “If they need help finding producers, we’ve got great partners who can help recruit people to the agencies. If they need help financing, we’ve got several different arms that can help them finance these new producers.”

Embracing tech tools

Smart Choice facilitates close connections with tech providers, including Easy Links, a comparative rater that secures discounted prices for agents. 

“We like to use our relationship and our size to negotiate cheaper pricing for our agents than if they just reached out,” says Wingate. “The training technology now that carriers have is top-notch. We come alongside and partner with them to bridge the gap and bring our agent to that training and host Smart Choice trainings and webinars.”

ISU Steadfast aims to add an AI-powered underwriter in the latter stages of 2025, a capability that will cut agent quoting times drastically. 

“If I’m a retail agent, I can upload a pile of documents,” McCarthy says. “The AI will read all the documents and pre-fill the quote system to make it even faster and more efficient for an agent. Instead of a human sitting there typing for 15 to 18 minutes, it just happens in a blink.”

Finding tailored tech solutions is a priority for Craven and Fortified.

“There’s a lot of time and energy being spent on gathering as much information to help our agents be on the front edge of this new technology.”

Fortified’s member portal is a difference maker for agents, as carriers can post information that agents can use to determine which products work best for their situation. 

“It allows me to post information that’s valuable to our members with regard to our production, our progress toward goals,” Craven adds. “There’s a whole host of information that they can access. Contact information about other members, so forth, that’s all there in one easy-to-access place in the portal.” 

SAP is also exploring AI and is holding a technology conference for agents to explore new capabilities in 2025.

Tiene says, “One of my agents is experimenting with bots, where the bot goes to the carrier website, pulls the cancellation notice back to the agency, attaches it to the file, and then pushes out notifications to the client.” 

• Networks that cultivate strong carrier relationships and provide broad market access allow agents to remain resilient in turbulent markets.
  
   

• The importance of training and education surged in 2025 (69.68 percent of agents cited it as a top benefit, up from 15.44 percent in 2024). Leading networks invest in development programs, empowering agents to leverage new tools and stay competitive.
  
   

• Providing consulting, administrative support, and hands-on guidance helps agencies scale, solve problems, and adapt to market changes.

• Acrisure Associate Agents Network
• FirstChoice, a MarshBerry Company
• Pacific Crest Services
• SBMP

ALL-STARS

• FirstChoice, a MarshBerry Company