Hub International Ltd., one of the more acquisitive brokers, plans to continue adding companies to its fold.

One of the few privately held brokers among the world's largest, Hub made 31 acquisitions last year and has already made 20 this year.

“You have to put them in the same group of acquirers ... who do 20-plus deals a year,” said John Wicher, principal at John Wicher & Associates Inc. in San Francisco, referring to Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., USI Insurance Services L.L.C. and Brown & Brown Inc.

What sets Hub apart are its regional platforms and its “principle of enabling acquirees through resources, market access and training,” Mr. Wicher said. “There's a greater autonomy post-transaction ... (Sellers) feel they're still empowered to make local decisions relative to their local market and their clients.”

Hub, No. 9 in Business Insurance's 2015 ranking of the world's largest brokers, boosted its 2014 brokerage revenue to $1.30 billion, a 12.9% jump due in part to strong organic growth and $170 million in annualized mergers and acquisitions revenue.

“We had terrific top-line growth, we had margin expansion, and we had a fabulous year from an M&A perspective,” said Hub Chairman and CEO Martin P. Hughes. “It was a terrific year for us, one of the best we've ever had in the history of the company,” which was founded in 1998.

The current plan is to focus more “on being opportunistic than we are on geography,” said Mr. Hughes.

In addition, Scott Goodreau, Hub's Chicago-based chief sales officer, said “we’ve really shored up what we’re doing in the Southeast … we’ve got a great presence and a great leadership team (in Florida) that we’re growing.

But with acquisitions becoming more expensive, “the multiples that we have to pay today are higher than the multiples we had to pay two or three years ago,” Mr. Hughes said. “It hasn't affected our bottom line in any negative way. What it has done is the cash outlay we have to put out to make acquisitions is certainly more ... From an economic standpoint, we believe the value proposition is the same or better. It's just costing more to make those acquisitions.”

Higher prices for M&As have “impacted everybody that's doing acquisitions,” said Bobby Reagan, CEO at Reagan Consulting Inc. in Atlanta. “If you don't respond to the marketplace, you're not going to be able to compete for quality acquisitions.”

Hub, however, has done some divesting.

In November, Hub sold Harmonia Corretora de Seguros Ltda., the São Paulo, Brazil-based insurance brokerage it acquired in 2011 “at current market price valuation measures,” a Hub spokeswoman said.

“It was actually a fine operation, and it was one that performed to every level that we expected it to,” Mr. Hughes said. But with cultural and language differences, it “took a very disproportionate amount of our management time ... and it made more sense for us to just focus on North America.”

Looking to the future, Mr. Goodreau said Hub considers employee benefits and specialty practices and services to be “huge growth areas,” adding that it's investing in technology and marketing to enhance the “digital experience” for its clients.

Angela Williams, who joined Hub as chief marketing officer in March, “comes to us with a lot of experience around digital marketing and customer insight, so that was an important hire for us,” Mr. Goodreau said.

Hub reverted to a privately held firm when it was acquired in 2007 by private equity firms Apax Partners L.L.P. and Morgan Stanley Principal Investments Inc. The brokerage recapitalized after being bought for $4.4 billion by San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman L.L.C. in October 2013.

Mr. Hughes said another recapitalization is “nowhere in sight.”

Hub has the ability to “continue growing and to achieve good results for their ownership without going into the public marketplace,” Mr. Reagan said. “That may be something they choose to do down the road, but it's not something they're being forced to do today.”