Banks already involved in the sales of insurance continue to grow both organically and through acquisitions. “Banks are driving 5% to 10% of the annual acquisition activity, at least in terms of the announced deals every year,” says Jim Campbell, partner at Reagan Consulting. “The activity overall is trending up, so the number of deals by banks has bumped up a little bit as well.”
But acquisitions have become challenging in recent years due to private-equity moving into the market. “The prices have been significantly higher than what we’ve been accustomed to over the years,” says Markham McKnight, president of BancorpSouth Insurance Services Inc., the insurance division of $13.9 billion-assets BancorpSouth in Tupelo, Miss.
