The insurance sector is colliding with a new customer rhythm. People can move money with a tap and ask an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant for advice in plain English. They bring those expectations to insurance: quick answers and fast follow-through. Yet many independent agencies are still slowed by disconnected software and manual steps.
That gap is widening just as a generational shift hits the industry. Many independent insurance agency owners are nearing retirement, and the path forward can feel like a choice between selling to a large consolidator or trying to modernize alone.
Mike Witte thinks there’s a third option. Witte is founder and CEO of Equal Parts, a platform that acquires independent agencies and provides technology, capital and operational support so they can compete at modern speed and scale while preserving the trust-based model clients value.
Before launching Equal Parts, Witte built workflow technology in oil and gas. In a conversation with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster, he explained why the leap made sense: both sectors are huge, but relationship-driven.
“I don’t think oil and gas and insurance are actually that far apart,” Witte said. “They’re both really big industries in which, once you get into it, everybody knows everybody. And it has a heavy relationship dynamic.”
The lesson he carried over is that innovation should strengthen the people doing the work. “It wasn’t about automating the people away,” he said. “It’s using innovation to enhance the human connection.”
Equal Parts is now scaling that thesis with new funding. The company has announced a $23 million Series A round led by Inspired Capital. Since its March founding, Equal Parts says acquired agencies have driven nearly 40% revenue growth and almost 50% bottom-line improvement. The company’s targets are bold: acquire 25 agencies this year and become the fastest company to $1 billion in premiums within the next 24 months.
Succession Plans
The pitch to agency owners starts with succession and sometimes frustration. “If you’re 65 years old and you’ve built a small town agency at some point you think ‘Where do I retire? What is my succession plan?’” Witte said. For many smaller agencies, he added, there aren’t many appealing options such as selling to private equity or big conglomerate.
Equal Parts wants to offer an exit without stripping away culture and autonomy. And for owners who still want to stay active, the company offers a different division of labor. Witte described one agency owner in his late 60s who knew he needed to sell but “wasn’t quite ready to … hang it up.” After joining Equal Parts, the owner stayed close to customers while the platform took over the blocking and tackling.
Witte summarized their message to the owner: “Just go spend time with your customers,” he said. “We’ll take care of it.”
What, exactly, is being “taken care of?”
Witte argued the industry’s biggest drag is less a lack of software than a lack of connection between systems.
“I came in with this idea that insurance had a technology problem. And I don’t believe that’s true,” he said. “Insurance has a massive connectivity problem. Nothing connects. Everything is a point-to-point system.”
In plain terms, he said, the insurance companies underwriting policies often don’t connect cleanly to agency management systems (the software that tracks policies, renewals and documents). Those systems may not connect to CRMs (customer relationship tools) or to websites and intake forms.
The outcome is predictable: people spend time moving information instead of serving customers.
Equal Parts’ operating system is designed to standardize workflows across acquisitions and automate repetitive back-office steps so relationship managers can focus on clients and growth.
“We’re absorbing that complexity for the people that are the heart of the agencies, which are the relationship managers,” Witte said. “Let us absorb the complexity of everything else.”
That people-first view also defines how Witte picks agencies to acquire.
“It’s not about a book of business. It’s not about a location. It is about people,” he said.
Early acquisitions set the tone for the broader network, so Equal Parts looks for owners who can be culture anchors and who are willing to rethink how the work gets done. Agencies that join, he added, tend to be motivated by the technology and the vision, not by a promise that they must give up their identity.
The AI Angle
Webster asked how AI might reshape distribution as consumers increasingly use large language models to describe their needs and compare coverage. Could that pull customers toward buying directly from carriers?
Witte said he expects AI to change how people learn and shop, but he doesn’t see it removing the need for a licensed professional to match products and policies with customers. He also said he sees an upside in customers arriving better informed, because insurance is a complicated product and many people don’t know what to ask for.
For Witte, AI should raise service quality by removing friction, not by replacing the conversation.
“Picking up the phone and calling my insurance agent or sending them a text, and two minutes later I get a text back and things are addressed,” he said, “that’s a pretty good service.”
He doesn’t see insurance as “the space in which people want to talk to robots” when something goes wrong. If AI can strip away some of the manual work behind the scenes, he said he believes agencies can respond faster and with more consistency.
Looking ahead, Witte wants Equal Parts to function less like a consolidator and more like a network. Once agencies share infrastructure, he sees room to expand what trusted relationship managers can offer beyond core property and casualty.
“There’s no reason that agent can’t be given the platform capabilities to sell great group benefits or to sell financial services if the back office is built to handle the complexity,” he said. “The world will look very different in five years than it does today, and even very different in a year. The companies that will be great are the companies that can move fast and adapt.”
