Why the next generation of brokers is not growing through employees

A brokerage firm with 400 clients has been looking for an office clerk for eight months. The position is advertised, the salary is in line with the market, and the location is well connected. Nevertheless: no qualified application. The owner is now working 55-hour weeks. She can no longer accept new clients.

This is not an isolated case. It is the reality in thousands of German brokerage offices.

For years, the dominant theory in the industry has been: there is no growth without back-office support. More clients require more employees to process transactions, file documents, and answer inquiries. Anyone who wants to scale must hire.

This theory is no longer true. And the insurance brokers who make the right decisions now will prove it.

The starting point: 46,000 brokers, average age 54

The figures are clear. According to the AfW Broker Barometer, the average age of German insurance brokers is 53.7 years. 67.2 percent are over 50. Only 4.4 percent are under 30.

What this means in concrete terms:

• Every third broker will quit in the next 15 years

• 50 percent of the current broker workforce will retire within 20 years

• 85 percent of brokers have no regulated succession plan

• According to BearingPoint, every fourth broker will disappear from the market by 2030

This is not a creeping change. This is a structural upheaval that will reorganize the entire industry over the next five to ten years.

For the brokers who stay or start fresh, a historic opportunity arises: more portfolios becoming free than ever before. More clients looking for a new broker. But also the question: how do you service these client portfolios when the employees are no longer there?

The old growth model: More clients, more staff

The classic growth model in broker sales is incredibly simple: A broker acquires clients. From a certain portfolio size, they need a back office to handle the administration. Filing policies, reporting claims, checking premium invoices, documenting contract changes. Anyone who wants to keep growing hires more employees. It has been working this way for decades.

The problem: This model scales linearly. Every new employee costs salary, onboarding, and infrastructure. The margin per client decreases with every head that is added. And a significant portion of the newly hired capacity flows not into sales activities, but into administration.

The BearingPoint Young Broker Study 2025 proves this impressively: 60 percent of the working hours of young brokers are not spent on consulting. They go into administration, documentation, and operational coordination. Only 25 percent of consulting processes are documented and standardized at all.

This means: of every new hire, more than half of the capacity flows into activities that do not generate direct revenue. The back-office employee you hire spends their time sorting incoming emails, transferring data between systems, and following up with insurers. Necessary work. But not value-creating work.

Why the old model no longer scales

Even if the old model worked from a business perspective: the labor market no longer provides it.

30 percent of training positions in the insurance and financial sector remain unfilled. This is reported by the Versicherungsbote, citing current DIHK data. The insurance industry has an attractiveness problem, especially among young career starters.

Three factors aggravate the situation:

1. Regulatory complexity. Over 80 percent of young brokers cite regulation as their biggest challenge. IDD documentation obligations, GDPR, the AI Regulation coming into effect in August 2026. Every new regulation increases the administrative effort per transaction. More regulation requires either more staff or smarter systems.

2. Salary competition. Qualified office clerks for the back office earn 38,000 to 48,000 euros in urban areas. For a brokerage firm with 500 clients and an average portfolio commission of approx. 250 euros per client per year, every additional full-time position is a noticeable cut in margin.

3. Generational change. The next generation has different expectations of workplaces. Remote capabilities, digital tools, meaningful work. "Filing policies in folders" is not a compelling job advertisement. The industry competes with tech companies and consulting firms for the same profiles. And it loses.

Tellingly: Only about one in seven young brokers would recommend the profession without reservation. This is not a perception problem. It is a structural problem.

The result: anyone who wants to hire today finds no one. And anyone who does find someone pays more for capacity that disappearing half of the time into non-value-creating work.

The decisive lever: Technology instead of staff

The brokerages that will win in this market think fundamentally differently about growth. This has little to do with the age of the owners and a lot to do with how they do the math.

They do not ask: "Who can I hire?" They ask: "What can I automate?"

This paradigm shift is particularly evident in newly founded offices. The BearingPoint Young Broker Study 2025 shows: These offices are less likely to build their own administrative structures and more likely to use existing platforms and technology solutions as an operational basis. This shifts the lever from personnel expansion to infrastructure choice. However, the approach is not tied to a founding year. Any office can adopt it, regardless of how long it has been on the market.

Old ModelNew ModelOwn back-office for administrationAI-supported transaction processingManual email sortingAutomatic classification and assignmentIndividual claims acceptanceStructured transaction creation by the systemEmployee growth proportional to clientsTechnology lever decouples growth from headcountOffice clerk rolesReviewer and decision-maker roles

The technology that makes this possible already exists. AI systems can analyze incoming communication, classify transactions, assign tasks, and draft replies. The human being reviews and approves. This is not a vision of the future. This is the operational standard for brokerages that are already working with AI infrastructure today.

Crucial to this is the distinction: it is not about a single AI tool that accelerates a task. It is about an operational infrastructure that changes the entire workflow. From the incoming email to the sent reply. From the claims report to the documentation in the broker management program. If only partial steps are automated, the human being still remains bound in every process. Only end-to-end automation creates the lever that decouples growth from staffing requirements.

What modern brokerages do differently

The differences compared to the established market are measurable:

Digitally positioned instead of paper-based. Modern offices rely on digital tools instead of folders. Administration systems, digital signatures, automated client communication are not additions, but the foundation.

Small and efficient instead of large and staff-intensive. The growth strategy is not: "When do I hire the next employee?" But rather: "How do I manage to care for 500 clients with three people instead of seven?"

Infrastructure as a decision, not as a purchase. Instead of collecting individual tools, these offices choose an operational basis where all processes converge. Not ten isolated solutions, but one layer that receives incoming communication, structures it, and translates it into clear processes with responsibility and priority.

According to Versicherungsbote, 85.3 percent of the surveyed brokers complain about excessively long waiting times at insurers and 72.6 percent complain about too slow claim processing. This frustration with the status quo drives the search for technological solutions. It is not a generational issue. Any office that works against manual processes day in and day out will sooner or later look for a better operational basis.

Revenue per employee as a new key metric

In the classic brokerage model, success is measured by portfolio size, number of contracts, or revenue. These metrics are not wrong, but they only tell half the story.

The more relevant question is: How much revenue does each employee generate? Revenue per employee makes the difference between a staff-intensive and a lever-based business model visible.

An example calculation:

Key MetricOffice A (classic)Office B (lever-based)Clients800800Employees84Portfolio revenue (at Ø 250 EUR/client)200,000 EUR200,000 EURRevenue per employee25,000 EUR50,000 EURPersonnel costs (estimated)320,000 EUR160,000 EURMargin before other costsnegative40,000 EUR

Office B cares for the same number of clients with half the staff. Not because the employees type faster. But because repetitive processes (sorting, allocation, standard communication) are handled by the system.

The consequence: Office B can growth without proportionally expanding staff. Every new client increases revenue without burdening the cost structure to the same extent.

This is the economic core of the change. Not efficiency. Not digitization. But operational leverage. The ability to generate more value creation per head. Not through faster work, but through structurally less manual work per process.

In an industry where 85 percent of brokers have no regulated succession plan, revenue per employee becomes an existential key metric. Anyone who can care for more clients per employee can take over more portfolios. Anyone who can take over more portfolios grows faster. Anyone who grows faster becomes a more attractive successor for the retiring generation.

What this means for the industry: Broker market 2030

The BearingPoint study "Broker Market 2030" predicts that every fourth broker will disappear from the market in the coming years. Consolidation will accelerate. The question is not whether this change is coming. The question is who benefits from it.

Three scenarios are emerging:

1. Platform consolidation. Large platforms and insurance tech providers are taking over operational functions that previously every office handled internally. Brokerages are becoming leaner and focus on client relationships and consulting. The platform provides the operational infrastructure.

2. The two-tier structure. Offices that invest in AI infrastructure will be able to care for more clients with fewer staff. Offices that hold on to the old staff growth model will come under cost and competitive pressure. The gap is widening. Not because some consulting is better, but because some produce structurally cheaper.

3. The structural breakdown. Technology-supported offices take over portfolios of retiring brokers, integrate them into lean structures, and service them with a fraction of the previous staff expenditure. This changes the cost structure of the entire industry.

Job profiles with AI reference in the insurance industry have risen from 5 to 21 percent within one year. The change is happening. The question is not if, but how fast.

For brokerages active today, this means: the next three to five years will decide which side of the two-tier structure you stand on. Anyone who pivots their operational basis to technology now has a structural advantage that grows over time. Anyone who waits will have to invest more later and compete against already optimized competitors.

Conclusion: The future belongs to leverage, not heading headcount

The future of the insurance broker will not be determined by who has the most employees. It will be determined by who achieves the greatest operational leverage.

The demographic reality allows for no other conclusion: with 67 percent of brokers over 50, 30 percent unfilled training positions, and 85 percent unregulated successions, growth through personnel is structurally at an end.

The next generation of brokerages will be smaller. But not weaker. These offices work differently: technology-supported, optimized for revenue per employee. Not out of conviction, but because the market forces it.

The good news: the tools exist. Portfolios are becoming available. And anyone who positions their operational basis correctly today builds an advantage that grows larger with every year.

Scale revenue. Not headcount.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many insurance brokers are there in Germany?

Currently, around 46,771 insurance brokers are registered in Germany. The average age is 53.7 years. 67.2 percent are over 50 years old, and only 4.4 percent are under 30. The industry is facing a significant generational change.

Why is there a shortage of young talent among insurance brokers?

Several factors: 30 percent of training positions remain vacant. The industry has an attractiveness problem among young career starters. High regulatory requirements (IDD, GDPR, AI Regulation) make entry complex. At the same time, other industries offer comparable salaries with fewer regulatory burdens.

How can a brokerage grow without hiring new employees?

Through operational leverage: AI-supported transaction processing reduces the manual effort per client. Platforms take over operational functions. Standard processes (address changes, policy inquiries, initial claims reports) are automated. The human being reviews and approves, instead of building each transaction themselves.

What percentage of working hours do brokers spend on administration?

According to the BearingPoint Young Broker Study 2025, 60 percent of working hours are not spent on consulting, but on administration, documentation, and operational coordination. In established offices, the administrative share is sometimes even higher, at 60 to 80 percent.

What will the broker market look like in 2030?

BearingPoint predicts that every fourth broker will disappear from the market by 2030. The industry is consolidating towards a platform economy: leaner offices, more technological infrastructure, fewer purely person-based models. Brokers who invest in AI infrastructure will be able to care for larger portfolios with smaller teams.

Is it still worth becoming an insurance broker?

Yes, under changed parameters. The wave of retirements creates an oversupply of portfolios becoming free. Anyone who relies on a technology-supported, lean structure can economically take over and care for these portfolios without allowing personnel expenses to grow proportionally. The business model is attractive if the cost structure is right. The decisive lever is not the number of clients, but the revenue per employee.

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