Arrow's insurance revenue grew 18.5 per cent in the two years its peers spent selling agencies

Arrow held on to its agency through the whole divestiture wave. Insurance revenue at the $4.5 billion-asset company was $6.5 million in 2023, $7.1 million in 2024 and $7.7 million in 2025 ^[5]. That is 18.5 per cent across the two years and 8.5 per cent in the most recent one ^[1][8]. Through the first six months of 2026 it passed $4 million ^[6]. A second half of $3.7 million ties last year ^[3], and two more quarters like the first two put 2026 near $8 million ^[2].

Neither deal this week came with a price. Arrow paid an undisclosed sum for Skene Valley ^[1], and a First Commonwealth spokesman did not respond to American Banker by deadline ^[4]. The one figure that would settle whether this is a change of strategy or a change of asking price is absent from both announcements. Arrow's management kept close tabs on the premiums sellers were receiving and decided to keep the Upstate Agency anyway, DeMarco said, then bought an employee-benefits provider in Greenville, New York, in 2024 ^[7].

"On the commercial side, having property-and-casualty and life insurance are really great ties to a relationship," DeMarco said ^[8]. On the consumer side he put conversion on homeowners policies sold to new home buyers at "about 50% referrals" ^[9]. That works because the market is small and concentrated: nine branches in Washington County, New York, and 57 per cent of a $919 million deposit market ^[10]. Call it roughly $524 million of deposits, about $58 million a branch ^[4].

The two buyers are running different businesses. First Commonwealth reported $2.9 million of insurance revenue in the first half of 2026 against $2.6 million a year earlier ^[11], an 11.5 per cent gain ^[5], on a $12.3 billion balance sheet ^[2]. Annualise both halves and Arrow earns about 18 cents of insurance revenue per $100 of assets to First Commonwealth's 5 cents ^[6].

The count still runs the other way. American Banker names these two purchases plus one by Colony Bankcorp of Fitzgerald, Georgia, in April 2025 ^[12]. Set that against more than a dozen institutions that sold between late 2022 and 2024, M&T's 67-year-old agency among them ^[3][16]. Three buyers, thirteen-plus sellers ^[7]. The narrower version I would defend is that the banks which never sold are the ones now holding a fee line big enough to defend. Buying the agency in the next county is the cheapest way to defend it. The counter is straightforward and I cannot rule it out on this record. If these agencies changed hands at the multiples private-equity buyers were paying in 2023, then two community banks are paying financial-buyer prices for referral flow. And no price was published for the Truist sale in February 2024, the largest of that period, to compare against ^[13].

Arrow closed its purchase of Utica-based Adirondack Bank in July and is open to more agencies, wealth management firms and other banks ^[14]. Those bids compete for the same capital, and agency goodwill is the one that does not add deposits. "We're looking to grow and enhance our shareholder value," DeMarco said. "We're in a growth mindset." ^[15]