To Our Clients,
You have given our agency the responsibility of insuring what is important to you, and we remain honored by your trust. We believe strongly in transparency and communication, which is why we like to share how we performed as an agency and what is happening in the insurance marketplace. As the world continues to deal with war, economic uncertainty, political discord, and a host of other issues, we feel it is more important than ever that you understand the forces impacting insurance and how we are working on your behalf.
Agency News
The agency continued its strong, organic growth in 2025. Our premium volume grew from $130,477,984 at the end of 2024 to $146,809,404 at the end of 2025, representing growth of 12.5%. This growth was entirely organic—no acquisitions—once again putting us ahead of broader industry growth benchmarks. Growing organically remains the best path for clients, as it maintains consistency, service quality, and long-term stability.
Between new business and rounding out existing accounts, the agency wrote $12,465,578 in new business during the year. While premium increases continued industrywide, our growth was not driven by rate alone. Our teams continued to earn new clients through expertise, responsiveness, and specialization.
Client loyalty remains one of our greatest strengths. Despite continuing frustration across the insurance marketplace, our retention once again exceeded industry averages, reinforcing the trust our clients place in us even during challenging market cycles.
We collected donations for those in need during back-to-school time and Thanksgiving, and several staff members participated in races for charity. We continue to give back to the community!
Recognition & Industry Leadership
In 2025, Big “I” named us a Best Practices Agency for the seventh year in a row—a designation reserved for the highest performing agencies in the country based on financial strength, operational excellence, and growth. Only 336 agencies out of approximately 36,000 independent insurance brokers in the country were named as Best Practices Agencies.
We were also named one of Insurance Journal’s Top 100 Agencies for the second consecutive year, ranking us among the very best retail insurance Property and Casualty agencies nationwide.
Additionally, we were honored as one of the Best Insurance Agencies to Work For in the East by Insurance Journal for the third year in a row. This award is especially meaningful because it is driven by employee feedback, and it reflects the culture, teamwork, and mutual respect that make our agency what it is.
What We Do Best: Habitational Insurance
What is Habitational Insurance? Insurance covering the properties where people live. Community associations like co-ops, condominiums, homeowners associations, and apartment buildings. We wrote 145 new community associations and apartment buildings in 2025. We now insure almost 2,000 community associations and 230 rental properties totaling over 2,300 habitational properties, mostly in New York and New Jersey. Try to find another retail agent who insures that many!
The agency continues to be extremely profitable. We are in trust and always will be. That means we make more money than we spend. Sounds like common sense, right? You would be surprised to know that there are insurance agencies out there who are out of trust. They basically pay Peter with Paul’s money. Over the course of time, this catches up with them.
Staff Achievements & Growth
2025 was an outstanding year for staff accomplishments. Our success starts with our people, and we welcomed Shannon Keeney, Kevin Mackoul, Ariana Morrocu, Stephanie Ruiz, Patti Dempsey, Tiffany Goldwater and Jennifer Toscano to the Mackoul family in 2025. As always, we hire proactively to maintain the high service standards our clients expect. There are over 60 staff members here and we’ve already hired 4 more staff members in 2026!
We celebrate work anniversaries for every employee. We now have 18 people who have been with us for over a decade. Not sure if too many other agencies have that kind of employee longevity. I would have to think they love it here, and we love having them!
- Jessica Malone was named Outstanding CSR of the Year for the State of New York by the Risk & Insurance Education Alliance.
- Jacqueline Cavanaugh and Lauren Yost were named Insurance Journal MVPs for 2025.
- Brice Reynolds was featured in Habitat Magazine for his industry knowledge.
- Angela Bozymowski, Patti Dempsey, Shannon Keeney, and Kevin Mackoul obtained their Property & Casualty licenses, and Kevin Mackoul obtained his Life & Health license as well! Unlike some agencies that have unlicensed personnel handling your insurance, you can be assured that everyone who should have a license in the agency has a license!
Personal Milestones
We celebrated many happy life events in 2025:
- Rebecca Scandaliato became engaged. We wish her a lifetime of happiness.
- Lisa Page, Danielle Klemm, Lauren Crowe, Brice Reynolds, Gabrielle Fisher, and Katelyn Defreitas all had beautiful babies. We welcome Jack, Alessia, Andrew, Kenny, Lucille, and Dylan!
We take pride in being an agency where careers – and families – grow.
Cheryl Fitzpatrick retired from the agency after 36 years. Though we are selfishly sad to see her go, we wish her many happy times with her husband, children, and grandchildren.
Departmental Highlights
Commercial Lines
Commercial Lines premium grew to $138,500,891, a 12.4% increase year over year. The team wrote over $11.5 million in new business, successfully moved policies out of wholesalers into stronger markets, obtained new carrier appointments, and consistently exceeded placement goals—providing broader coverage and long-term stability for our insureds.
Personal Lines
Personal Lines had its strongest year ever, growing 14.8% and writing $925,117 in new business, by far the most in agency history. While the market remains difficult, the team continues to navigate carrier restrictions and rate increases while finding solutions for clients whenever possible.
Employee Benefits
Our Employee Benefits department continued its steady growth and conducted workplace harassment training for more than 2,000 employees across property management firms. Service, compliance support, and education remain our differentiators in a community-rated marketplace.
Contractor Review Department
Our Contractor Review Department conducted 334 building reviews and 49 unit owner reviews in 2025. With New York Labor Laws remaining extremely unfavorable to property owners, risk transfer is more important than ever—and this department continues to protect clients from costly exposures.
Homeowners Insurance Monitoring
This department more than doubled in size again, growing from 3,943 units to 9,227 units. We now monitor homeowners’ policies for thousands of residents, helping associations ensure compliance and reduce claim disputes.
Marketing & Technology
We received 11 new five-star Google reviews in 2025 and continue to maintain exceptional ratings across all platforms. We also refined proposals, enhanced educational content, expanded video resources, and continued implementing Artificial Intelligence tools—not to replace our staff, but to streamline processes and improve response times.
Looking Ahead
While we had hoped for a softening of the insurance marketplace, the commercial insurance marketplace remains firm overall, though the good news is that renewal trends suggest it is gradually moving off the peak conditions of recent years. However, we expect portions of the insurance market to remain challenging in 2026—particularly Liability, Umbrella, and Directors & Officers coverage. Why?
- Social Inflation & Changing Jury Behavior – Social inflation refers to the rise in insurance claim costs driven not by economic factors like medical or wage inflation, but by changes in societal attitudes, legal system behavior, and litigation trends. In other words, it’s the non-economic forces that make liability claims more frequent, more expensive, and harder to predict. It continues to be the single biggest driver of increasing liability costs. This includes:
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- Larger Jury Awards (“Nuclear Verdicts”) – Jury awards of $10M+ have surged. While the number of nuclear verdicts for 2025 is not yet known, there were 135 nuclear verdicts in 2024 totaling $31.3B, and it is expected that the figure is higher for 2025.
- Shift in Juror Attitudes – Jurors show increased sympathy toward plaintiffs and stronger anti-corporate bias, recommending large awards even against small businesses.
- Litigation as a Social Norm – Fewer Americans believe there are “too many lawsuits,” indicating shifting cultural norms that encourage litigation.
- Third Party Litigation Funding (TPLF) – This is where outside investors finance lawsuits in exchange for a portion of any award – they are typically undisclosed to all parties in a case and the courts, and are linked to prolonged litigation, increased trial and settlement demands, and larger verdicts. It also encourages the filing of new claims. In 2025, $35.8 billion in direct annual economic losses were tied to third-party litigation funding. That number will probably only go up.
I would suggest budgeting a 10% increase at a minimum to be safe.
As always, we will continue advocating for our clients, seeking out better terms, and communicating clearly about what to expect so there are no surprises.
