Mergers and insurance pricing cycles are facts of life in the brokerage industry as is corporate restructuring.

Most publicly held brokers and many private ones have launched restructuring programs in recent years. While some have been driven by acquisition integration, many others aim to expand profit margins by cutting expenses and improving efficiency in a soft property/casualty market, experts say.

As commission-based revenues follow insurance prices downward, brokers try to improve their profit by cutting expenses.

Whatever the motives, restructuring is a constant in the industry.

Which brokers are doing it at any given time “depends on what time of day you look,” Gretchen Roetzer, a director at Fitch Ratings Inc. in Chicago, said jokingly.

Global brokers typically have followed major acquisitions with restructuring. In 2010, for example, Aon P.L.C. reported three such concurrent programs: two covering its respective 2008 and 2010 acquisitions of Benfield Group Ltd. and Hewitt Associates Inc., and a nonmerger-related streamlining process begun in 2007 that eliminated 4,700 jobs and closed or consolidated several offices.

By the time the Hewitt integration wound down in 2013, Aon Hewitt had eliminated 2,960 jobs at a cost of $266 million and consolidated real estate holdings at a cost of another $163 million, according to Aon's financial statements. Aon realized $565 million in savings in 2012 and 2013 from the restructuring, the company reported.

“There's a lot of room, especially for the big brokers, to increase their efficiency because of the number of acquisitions they do over time,” Ms. Roetzer said.

“M&A does drive a lot of these,” though the activity is concentrated among the most acquisitive firms, said John L. Ward, principal of insurance private equity firm Cincinnatus Partners L.L.C. in Loveland, Ohio.

Controlling costs and improving efficiency drive many other restructuring programs.

For example, Willis Group Holdings P.L.C. last year launched a three-year “operational improvement program” to cut costs and improve client services. The program will send 3,500 support jobs to lower-cost near-shore and offshore centers, cutting the number of workers in higher-cost locations to 60% from 80%; reduce headcount in support positions; consolidate offices and cut square footage of floor space per employee; and simplify information technology systems, Willis reported.

The program does not cover Willis' recently announced merger with Towers Watson & Co., which the companies said would produce $100 million to $125 million in savings from elimination of duplicate corporate costs and increased efficiencies.

Meanwhile, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. moved a number of back-office functions several years ago to a third-party provider in India at lower cost. And Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group P.L.C. last year completed a two-year “business transformation program” to cut costs and improve efficiency; the program has produced £16 million ($25 million) in annual savings for one-time costs of £17 million ($26.5 million), according to JLT, which reported £1.1 billion ($1.7 billion) in 2014 revenue.

Some forms of cost-cutting produce only marginal changes in the bottom line, experts say.

For middle-market brokers, producer commissions are a major expense, but firms are reluctant to reduce them because producers are key to the brokers' success, Mr. Ward said.

And while information technology and back-office functions are savings targets, “in the big picture, they aren't going to move the needle in any significant way,” he said.

Still, with the soft market making it difficult for brokers to expand top-line revenue, cutting costs and improving efficiency do help.

“It's a way for them to deal with market conditions,” Ms. Roetzer said.

Consolidating administrative and back-office functions — and even insurance placement functions, as in the case of placement hubs operated by Marsh L.L.C., Aon and Willis — also allow local brokers to concentrate on client service, said John Wicher, principal at consultant John Wicher & Associates Inc. in San Francisco.

A decade ago, brokers often told acquisition targets that they wouldn't interfere with the acquired companies' ongoing operations. Now, brokers want to integrate acquired companies into their technology and other platforms for efficiency's sake, he said.

“You aren't going to hear them say anymore, "We aren't going to change you,' “ Mr. Wicher said. “That's just not the reality.”