Commercial insurance renewal rates pulled back across most major lines in Q2 2026, according to the Ivans Index, extending a softening trend that has built since late 2025.
Five of the six tracked lines posted lower averages than Q1, though all except workers' compensation remained up year over year. The broad direction is clear - the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers reported in May that average commercial premiums fell 1.2% in Q1 2026, ending a 33-quarter streak of increases and marking the clearest broad-market shift in nearly nine years. But two lines are moving against that dominant softening trend in ways that deserve closer attention heading into Q3: general liability is running higher than a year ago despite pulling back quarter over quarter, and workers' compensation is edging back toward zero from negative territory for the first time in several quarters.
General liability fell quarter over quarter from 6.85% in Q1 to 5.44% in Q2, with rates peaking at 5.70% in April and settling at 5.33% in June. It was, however, the only tracked line to post a higher average than Q2 2025, when it averaged 4.66%. In a market where every other line is running below where it was a year ago, a line posting a year-over-year increase is accumulating severity pressure rather than releasing it - and the quarter-over-quarter pullback does not change the direction of that underlying trend.
Workers' compensation was the only line to move in the opposite direction quarter over quarter, edging from -1.73% in Q1 to -1.37% in Q2 and improving from -1.75% in Q2 2025. The line has posted negative renewal rates for several consecutive quarters, driven by sustained carrier profitability - the National Council on Compensation Insurance recorded the line's net combined ratio at 91% for 2025. The directional reversal, modest as it is, signals that the workers' compensation softening cycle may be approaching its floor. Medical cost inflation and claim severity are drawing closer scrutiny heading into the second half of the year, and the combination of a tightening combined ratio and rising cost pressure gives the reversal its specific forward-looking significance.
Umbrella posted the largest quarterly decline of any tracked line, from 9.36% in Q1 to 7.96% in Q2, below Q2 2025's average of 9.07%, with April beginning at 8.27% and declining to 7.60% by June. Despite the pullback, umbrella remained the highest-rated line in the index, with Michigan running well above the national average at between 15.78% and 17.78% across the quarter.
Commercial auto averaged 4.93% in Q2, down from 5.28% in Q1 and well below Q2 2025's 8.43% - a year-over-year decline that illustrates how far the line has moderated. New York ran far above the national average at between 12.80% and 13.98% monthly across the quarter. Business owner's policy averaged 6.16%, against 6.74% in Q1 and 7.87% in Q2 2025, with April at the quarter's high of 6.43% and June at the low of 5.97%. Commercial property averaged 6.40%, below Q1's 6.83% and Q2 2025's 7.89%, with North Carolina an outlier at above 10% throughout the quarter.
The Ivans Index analyses more than 120 million data transactions to produce a monthly rate benchmark across the commercial lines market. Michael Streit, president of Applied Systems Carrier, said renewal rates across most commercial lines continued to soften in Q2, extending a trend that has built over the past year, and that the index gives agents, brokers and carriers a consistent data-driven view of shifts as they plan for the remainder of 2026.
For Q3, the lines most worth watching are the same two running against the softening consensus: general liability, where year-over-year increases persist despite quarterly moderation, and workers' compensation, where the directional reversal from negative territory may signal that the floor is closer than the headline rate suggests.
