Brown & Brown (BRO) Risk Analysis

At December 31, 2024, our executive officers, directors and certain of their family members collectively beneficially owned approximately 15.6% of our outstanding common stock, of which J. Hyatt Brown, our chairman of the board, and his sons, J. Powell Brown, our president and chief executive officer, and P. Barrett Brown, our executive vice president and the president of our Retail segment, beneficially owned approximately 15.0%. As a result, our executive officers, directors and certain of their family members have significant influence over (i) the election of our board of directors, (ii) the approval or disapproval of any other matters requiring shareholder approval and (iii) our affairs and policies.

We believe that a significant contributor to our success has been our corporate culture as a lean, highly competitive, decentralized growth and profit-oriented sales and service organization. As we grow, including from the integration of employees and businesses acquired in connection with previous or future acquisitions, we may find it difficult to maintain important aspects of our corporate culture, which could negatively affect our profitability and/or our ability to retain and recruit people of the highest integrity and quality who are essential to our future success. We may face pressure to change our culture as we grow, particularly if we experience difficulties in attracting competent employees who are willing to embrace our culture. Remote and hybrid work arrangements may also negatively impact our ability to maintain our culture. In addition, as our organization grows and we are required (either by new regulations or otherwise) to implement more complex organizational structures, or if we experience a significant change in management, management philosophy or business strategy, we may find it increasingly difficult to maintain the beneficial aspects of our corporate culture, such as our decentralized sales and service operating model, which could negatively impact our future success.

We rely on a large number of vendors and other third parties to provide services, data and information such as technology, information security, funds transfers, business process management, and administration and support functions that are critical to the operations of our business. These third parties include agents and other brokers and intermediaries, insurance markets, data providers, payroll service providers, software and system vendors, health plan providers, custodians, risk modeling providers, and providers of human resource functions. Some of these providers are located outside the U.S., which exposes us to business disruptions and political risks inherent when conducting business outside of the U.S. As we do not control many of the actions of these third parties, we are subject to the risk that their decisions, actions, inactions or operations may adversely impact us and replacing these service providers could create significant delay in services or operations and/or additional expense A failure by the third parties to: (i) comply with service level agreements in a high quality and timely manner, particularly during periods of our peak demand for their services, (ii) maintain adequate internal controls that may impact our own financial reporting, or (iii) adequately maintain the confidentiality of any of our data or trade secrets or adequately protect or properly use other intellectual property to which they may have access, could result in economic, financial and/or reputational harm to us. These third parties also face their own technology, operating, business and economic risks, and any significant failures by them, including the improper use or disclosure of our confidential customer, employee, or Company information or failure to comply with applicable law, could cause harm to our reputation or otherwise expose us to financial liability. An interruption in or the cessation of service by any service provider as a result of systems failures, capacity constraints, non-compliance with legal, regulatory or contractual obligations, financial difficulties or for any other reason could disrupt our operations, impact our ability to offer certain products and services, and result in contractual or regulatory penalties, liability claims from customers or employees, damage to our reputation and harm to our business.

We have substantial operations in the United Kingdom, as well as operations in Belgium, Bermuda, Canada, Cayman Islands, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore and United Arab Emirates. In the future, we intend to continue to consider additional international expansion opportunities. Our international operations may be subject to a number of risks, including: - Difficulties in staffing and managing international operations;- Less flexible employee relationships, which may make it difficult and expensive to terminate employees and which limits our ability to prohibit employees from competing with us after their employment ceases;- Difficulties in maintaining, or resistance to, our corporate culture;- Political and economic instability (including acts of terrorism and outbreaks of war) either in the United States or globally;- Coordinating our communications and logistics across geographic distances and multiple time zones;- Unexpected changes in regulatory requirements and laws;- Adverse trade policies, and adverse changes to any of the policies of either the U.S. or any of the international jurisdictions in which we operate;- Adverse changes in tax rates;- Variations in foreign currency exchange rates;- Legal or political constraints on our ability to maintain or increase prices;- Governmental restrictions on the transfer of funds to or from us, including to or from our operations outside the United States;- Burdens of complying with, and the risk of employees or third parties acting on our behalf violating, anti-corruption laws in foreign countries; and - Burdens of complying with a wide variety of labor practices and international laws and or disclosure requirements, including those relating to export and import duties, environmental policies and privacy issues. The occurrence of one or more of these risks may impact our business, results of operations, or financial condition.

Our non-U.S. operations are conducted primarily in the local currencies of the respective countries in which we operate. Our Consolidated Financial Statements are denominated in U.S. dollars, and to prepare those financial statements we must translate certain financial results from local currencies into U.S. dollars using exchange rates for the current period. Fluctuations in currency exchange rates that are unfavorable may have an adverse effect on our results of operations. As a result of such translations, fluctuations in currency exchange rates from period-to-period that are unfavorable to us could result in our Consolidated Financial Statements reflecting adverse period-over-period changes in our financial performance or reflecting a period-over-period improvement in our financial performance that is not as robust as it would be without such fluctuations in the currency exchange rates. We may use derivative instruments, such as foreign currency forward and option contracts, to hedge certain exposures to fluctuations in foreign exchange rates. The use of such hedging activities may not be effective to offset any, or more than a portion, of the adverse financial effects of unfavorable movements in foreign exchange rates over the limited time the hedges are in place.

We rely on information technology and third-party vendors to provide effective and efficient service to our customers, process claims, and timely and accurately report information to carriers, which often involves secure processing of confidential, sensitive, proprietary and other types of information. We face potential threats due to new and increasingly sophisticated methods of attack. Cybersecurity breaches of any of the systems we rely on may result from circumvention of security systems, denial-of-service attacks or other cyber-attacks, software bugs, malicious or destructive code, hacking, social engineering attacks (including "phishing" attacks and digital or telephonic impersonation), computer viruses, ransomware, malware, employee or insider error or threats, malfeasance, social engineering, physical breaches or other actions, any of which could expose us to unauthorized access, exfiltration, manipulation, corruption, loss or disclosure of proprietary, customer, employee or other data, the inability to render services due to system outages or other business disruptions, regulatory action and scrutiny, monetary and reputational damages and significant increases in compliance costs. Any of the foregoing may be exacerbated by a delay or failure to detect a cybersecurity incident or the full extent of such incident. A compromise may not manifest itself for months, or even years, and we may not be able to detect a compromise in a timely manner. In addition, disclosure or media reports of actual or perceived security vulnerabilities to our systems or those of our third-party service providers, even if no breach has been attempted or occurred, could lead to reputational harm, loss of customers and revenue, or increased regulatory actions and scrutiny. The risk of such cybersecurity breaches may be increased by our reliance on work-from-home or other remote work technologies. An interruption of our access to, or an inability to access, our information technology, telecommunications or other systems could significantly impair our ability to perform such functions on a timely basis. If sustained or repeated, such a business interruption, system failure or service denial could result in a deterioration of our ability to write and process new and renewal business, provide customer service, pay claims in a timely manner or perform other necessary business functions. We have from time to time experienced cybersecurity incidents, such as malware infections, phishing campaigns, ransomware and vulnerability exploit attempts, which to date have not had a material impact on our business. We are an acquisitive organization, and the process of integrating the information systems of the businesses we acquire is complex and exposes us to additional risks as we might not adequately identify weaknesses in the acquired company's information systems, which could expose us to unexpected liabilities or make our own systems more vulnerable to attack. In the future, any material breaches of cybersecurity, or media reports of the same, even if untrue, could cause us to experience reputational harm, loss of customers and revenue, loss of proprietary data, regulatory actions and scrutiny, sanctions or other statutory penalties, litigation, liability for failure to safeguard customers' information, impairment of invested capital or financial losses. Such losses may not be insured against or not fully covered through insurance we maintain. Despite our efforts to mitigate cybersecurity threats, we cannot guarantee our measures will prevent, contain, detect, or remediate all incidents. The costs and operational consequences of enhancing system protections could rise significantly as threats increase. While we endeavor to design and implement technologies, policies and procedures to identify such incidents as quickly as possible, any response could take substantial time, and there may be extensive delays before we obtain full and reliable information. During such time we would not necessarily know the extent of the harm or how best to remediate it, and certain errors or actions could be repeated or compounded before they are discovered and remediated, all of which may further increase the costs and consequences of such incident. Any of these losses may not be insured against or be fully covered by insurance we maintain. Additionally, our control over and ability to monitor the cybersecurity practices of our third-party vendors and service providers, and other third parties with whom we do business, remains limited, and there can be no assurance that we can prevent, mitigate, or remediate the risk of any compromise or failure in the cybersecurity infrastructure owned or controlled by such third parties. Additionally, any contractual protections with such third parties, including our right to indemnification, if any, may be limited or insufficient to prevent a negative impact on our business from such compromise or failure. As these threats evolve, cybersecurity incidents will be more difficult to detect, defend against, mitigate and remediate. Any of the foregoing may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and reputation.

Frequent technological changes, new products and services and evolving industry standards are influencing the insurance business. The internet, for example, is increasingly used to securely transmit benefits and related information to customers, operate our day-to-day activities, and to facilitate business-to-business information exchange and transactions. We are continuously taking steps to upgrade and expand our information systems capabilities, including how we electronically interact with our customers, vendors, insurance carriers and other intermediaries. Maintaining, protecting and enhancing these capabilities to keep pace with evolving industry and regulatory standards, and changing customer preferences, requires an ongoing commitment of significant resources. If the information we rely upon to run our businesses was found to be inaccurate or unreliable or if we fail to effectively maintain our information systems and data integrity, we could experience operational disruptions, regulatory or other legal problems, increases in operating expenses, loss of existing customers, difficulty in attracting new customers and/or maintaining third-party relationships or suffer other adverse consequences. Our technological development projects may not deliver the benefits we expect once they are completed or may need to be replaced or become obsolete more quickly than expected, which could result in the accelerated recognition of expenses or write-offs. If we do not effectively and efficiently manage and upgrade our technology portfolio regularly, or if the costs of doing so are higher than we expect, our ability to provide competitive services to new and existing customers in a cost-effective manner and our ability to implement our strategic initiatives could be adversely impacted. Additionally, we use artificial intelligence ("AI") and robotic processing automation ("RPA") in our business, including with respect to services provided to our customers. We have internal policies governing the use of AI and RPA by our employees designed to protect us from breaches of data privacy, errors and omissions liability and regulatory enforcement risk; however, our employees could violate these policies and expose us to such risks. Furthermore, our exposure to these risks may increase if our vendors, suppliers, or other third-party providers employ AI or RPA in relation to the products or services they provide to us, as we have limited control over such use in third-party products or services. These risks include the input or processing of confidential information, including material non-public information, in contravention of our policies or contractual restrictions to which any of the foregoing are subject, or in violation of applicable laws or regulations, including those relating to data protection. If any of these risks materialize, such information could become part of a dataset that is accessible by other third-party AI or RPA applications and/or users. Additionally, AI and RPA heavily rely on the collection and analysis of extensive data sets and interaction between systems. Due to the impracticality of incorporating all relevant data into the models or algorithms used by AI and RPA it is inevitable that data sets within these models will contain inaccuracies and errors, and potential biases. This could potentially render such models inadequate or flawed, negatively impacting the effectiveness of the technology. We are exposed to the risks associated with these inaccuracies, errors and biases, along with the adverse impacts that such flawed models could have on our business and operations. Furthermore, governance and ethical issues relating to the use of AI or RPA may also result in reputational harm, liability and/or financial losses. AI, RPA and related applications are developing rapidly. The use of these technologies by our competitors may give them a competitive advantage that cannot be predicted at this time, and it may negatively affect our assumptions regarding the competitive landscape of our business. Consequently, it is difficult to predict all risks associated with these new technologies, which may eventually impact our business, results of operations, or financial condition.