Summary
The reason Marsh is struggling is because of poor leadership ending up with $850,000,000+ in fines from NY, IL and CT for bid rigging and prohibited contingency fees. Future profitability & growth for these brokerages is anything but certain and likely to grow very slowly because they are no longer able to take undisclosed profit sharing - ie. contingency fees that used to comprise significant profits. Therefore smaller brokerage houses that niche the very profitable Property and Casualty commercial lines will win more quotes against them now that commission means total commission and not partial commission disclosed to the customer.
Analysis
Big brokerages are struggling with contingency fees still. OH is suing now, and we have not heard from Florida, TX or CA yet? But NY has recently OK'd some service fees that are not the same as contingency fees, so the issue is not completely settled. It is a tough road ahead for big brokers who have a more difficult assignment for future growth. That growth probably means focusing their agents selling their own insurance company's insurance policy(s). But even that comes with standard risk management loss averages that tend to prevent irresponsible rating to artificially build their book.
