32% of insurance M&A deals destroy organizational value: Acord

According to Acord's most recent data, 32% of all carrier transactions between July 2023 and December 2025 destroyed value. 

The 2026 report, "Carrier Mergers & Acquisitions: Drivers, Implications & Outcomes," studied about 500 carrier transactions across 84 countries and assessed performance based on the value created for shareholders of the acquiring carrier, measured through total shareholder return (TSR) indexed against the MSCI World Index.

Among buyer motivations, Acord found that "Scale & Scope," or amortizing fixed costs and improving resource access by increasing absolute size or expanding scope across strategic and tactical dimensions, dropped from the most cited strategy to third place. Scale & Scope was the only cited motivation to result in a negative indexed total shareholder return and averaged -13.6%.

"The underperformance of Scale & Scope as a buyer motivation highlights the difficulties of achieving scale-related benefits through M&A. Increasing scale only amplifies what already exists, including inherent limitations and challenges; it rarely transforms," said Dave Sterner, Acord's senior vice president of research and development, in a press release. "Scale benefits are often overestimated, while cost synergies are smaller than projected. Integration risks are also systemically underpriced, and diseconomies of scale are overlooked."

The report highlights that M&A activity has dropped, generally displaced by initiatives in operational efficiency, digital transformation and AI implementation. The rapid adoption of technology innovation and focus on investments in data or AI-enhanced capabilities has also changed carrier approach to such deals.

"For transactions that fell short, value destruction was driven primarily by execution, not deal logic," Sterner stated. "Without disciplined value-capture management, synergies identified in diligence often dissipate during integration."

"As insurance M&A continues to evolve toward fewer, larger and more complex deals, disciplined execution will remain the defining differentiator between transactions that close and those that deliver lasting results," Sterner added. "Organizations that protect core operations, translate deal intent into focused value initiatives, establish clear decision rights and sequence integration deliberately are far better positioned to sustain value creation."