Obviously this does vary because retail insurance is usually sold locally but the middle men were eliminated years ago.

First, it was phones. This happened in the early 90s. Then it was internet which was largely finished by the early 2010s. The only exception for this is that online price-comparison websites have added back some distribution costs...but you still need to spend on marketing if you are online (generally speaking, online ads aren't cheap, I know insurers in my market that have moved away from price-comparison/online advertising because of the cost).