After the Handshake: Protecting Deal Value in Independent Agency M&A

Sept 16, 2026 | 2:00 P.M. ET

Every week another independent agency signs a Letter of Intent, and that’s when the real risk kicks in. Most deals don’t underperform because the price was off. It’s the integration that gets them: retention slips, carrier codes collide, contingency volume gets stranded, and E&O exposure climbs at exactly the moment service needs to be flawless.

In this 30-minute panel, Craig Welsh, an insurance executive with three decades inside the agency-carrier relationship, talks about what carriers actually look for during a merger and what makes an acquirer someone they want to grow with. Ilya Filipov of Cogneesol walks through the integration playbook: AMS migration, carrier deduplication, book cleanup, and the surge capacity that keeps clients from walking out the door mid-transition.

Whether this is your first acquisition or your fifth, you’ll walk away knowing where deals typically leak value and how to plug those leaks, from due diligence all the way through the first renewal cycle.