In today's challenging marketplace, it is easy to blame all the problems of insurance intermediaries on the soft cycle or the underlying economic uncertainty, from unemployment to the mortgage crisis. But I have been in the business long enough to know that something more is afoot here than simple economic fallout.

If you go back 20 years and think about all the household names that are no longer with us–Dinner Levison, Fred S. James, Alexander & Alexander, Johnson & Higgins, just to name a few – you see clearly that there is nothing new about mergers and acquisitions. But unlike the past, the mergers and acquisitions of the current marketplace are dramatically recasting the business landscape.MarshBerry, one of the most insightful market prognosticators out there, has projected that by 2015, the number of small agencies – those with less than $500,000 in commission revenue – will drop to 3,500, at least 15,000 fewer than in 2005. The number of firms in the $2.5 million to $5 million revenue range will stay about the same, but there will be an explosion in the firms earning more than $5 million, $10 million and even $100 million or more in revenue annually.