In the late 1980s, two groups of agencies represented the vast majority of agency aggregation in the United States: Iroquois Group and Leavitt Group both started with a large number of agency locations that they owned and operated.

Insurance companies had discontinued agency-billed policies. Consequently, they had done away with the "float," which historically made it easier to create a new agency. Something needed to be done to help new and smaller agencies, especially those in rural areas.

In 1990, a group of 450 bank-affiliated insurance agencies in North Dakota and Minnesota became one of the first agency aggregations that started without a nucleus of self-owned agencies. Within two years, Insurance Partners had become the largest producer of new business in the nation for Metropolitan P&C and was named  National Agency of the Year.