Commercial insurance prices flattened, just not for small accounts

Commercial insurance prices in America have nearly stopped rising. Policies written in the second quarter of 2026 cost 0.5% more than equivalent coverage a year earlier, per WTW's Commercial Lines Insurance Pricing Survey, reported by ProgramBusiness and Carrier Management. Large accounts did not merely flatten. They fell, for the first time since the end of 2017.

Small businesses opened their renewals and found them higher.

The number

0.5%, against 2.5% in the first quarter of 2026 and 3.8% a year earlier. WTW builds it from 43 insurers, about a fifth of the market. Yi Jing of WTW said commercial insurance pricing is "continuing to move toward a more balanced market, with overall price increases moderating across many lines." The survey holds the amount of coverage still. A business does not.

Four different things get called the rate

Rate is the price per unit of exposure: per $100 of building value, per vehicle, per $1,000 of payroll or sales. That is what WTW measures.

Insured value is the other half of the multiplication: property premium is roughly rate times insured value. If the carrier's replacement-cost model raises a building's value 8% and the rate drops 6%, the invoice goes up. Liability is rated on sales, workers' compensation on payroll, so a business that grew pays more at a lower rate.

Exposure count is third: add a van or a location and the premium rises with no rate change.

Renewal premium is fourth, the one on the invoice. The Ivans Index measures it from real renewal transactions. Its August 2026 reading has commercial property renewals up 5.69%. The Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers, measuring the second quarter, April through June, has property premium down 6.3%. Different months, and different questions. Neither is wrong. Only one is the question on the invoice.

The business pays its agent, the agent remits to the carrier, the carrier cedes part of the risk to reinsurers. The standard explanation for cheaper property is that last step: reinsurers took in more capital, charged carriers less for catastrophe cover, and carriers passed some of it on. Some. The Council's second-quarter index shows where it landed: large accounts down 3.7%, medium down 1.9%, small down 0.5%.

Liability runs the other way: priced against accidents that already happened, settled against today's jury awards. The Council ties rising umbrella premium to large awards in commercial auto cases. Umbrella rose again in the second quarter, its 35th straight quarterly increase, a streak beginning around the fourth quarter of 2017: roughly eight and three-quarter years, through the soft market property now enjoys.

Who it hits here

A Monsey contractor with three vans, a warehouse off Cedarbridge, a Cleveland Heights distributor: the lines they buy are the ones still climbing in the August Ivans figures. Businessowners policy up 5.44%, commercial auto up 3.58%, umbrella up 6.82%, each just under July.

The second-quarter cuts the Council put numbers to: property down 6.3%, cyber down 3.2%, workers' compensation down 3.2%. A twelve-employee business does not buy cyber. It does buy property, inside its businessowners policy, and the renewal still came back higher, because insured value and exposure moved even where rate fell.

New Jersey adds a layer. Phase two of P.L.2022 c.87 took effect 1 January 2026, lifting the mandatory bodily injury floor on standard New Jersey auto policies, commercial included, from $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident to $35,000 and $70,000. The basic policy under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-3.1 is outside it. The state's Bulletin 25-06 gave commercial auto insurers until 30 January 2026 to file rates for the new minimums, and says a carrier raising limits at renewal owes the insured a notice, not a signature. A Lakewood fleet still writing at the old minimum was moved up at its first 2026 renewal. One already carrying more sees nothing.

New York's senate bill S9281, introduced in February, would move commercial property and general liability rates to prior approval and require the dollar amount of any increase, and its reasons, printed on the bill. It sits in committee and has not passed.

What to watch

Early October: the September Ivans Index. The businessowners number fell from 5.94% in July to 5.44% in August. A second fall, to below roughly 5%, would be the first sign the softening reached small policies.

Late November: the Council's third-quarter index, and whether umbrella makes it 36.

1 January 2027: property catastrophe reinsurance renewals. What reinsurers charge carriers in January funds, or does not fund, property cuts the year after.