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Can any tenured independent agents from small towns (less than 10K) give me an idea of what the average yearly premium volume should be for the first 5 years in business?

...Well, our small agency was at a little over $1,000,000 at that point. We maintained about a 90% retention rate with one agent and one part time CSR at that time. We now have five agents and two CSRs. We are in East Tennessee and write business in two primary counties. Good $elling !!!

I would agree. In Tier 3 markets - such as the one you are in currently, the average tends to be about $1M of premium written per year, or approximately $75K to $100k of new business commissions written. Tier 3 markets tend to have higher than average retention than Tier 1 or Tier 2 markets so you'll preserve 94%-97% of your business at renewel/expiration which will help you quite a bit.

I would expect by the end of a 5 year period you should be north of $4M of premium easily - probably close to our just above $5M.

Good luck and have fun with your business!

I'm not sure about the other agents who replied but I have been in this business long enough to know what is realistic and what is not. Writing 1 million dollars of new business each year, is not realistic, especially for a small town agency. The average personal lines agency writes between $200,000 - $400,000 of new business each year.

Here's an example assuming you write $200,000 of new business and have 90% retention...
Year 1 - $200,000
Year 2 - $380,000
Year 3 - $542,000
Year 4 - $687,000
Year 5 - $819,020

Depends on the competition in the area as well. Easy for someone to say you should be able to grow at 500k to 1mil pace per year. Most of that new business you'll have to take away from the other guy.