Large commercial accounts posted their first price decrease since the end of 2017 in the second quarter of 2026, according to WTW's Commercial Lines Insurance Pricing Survey (CLIPS), as an eight-year run of sustained rate increases continued to unwind across the commercial market.
The aggregate commercial price increase for Q2 2026 was 0.5%, down from 2.5% in Q1 2026 and 3.8% in the same quarter last year. The direction of travel is clear, but the aggregate masks a market moving in different directions by line and by account size.
Commercial property saw the largest price decrease in Q2, with prices falling more sharply than in the prior quarter. That continues a trend confirmed across multiple market benchmarks this year. The Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers (CIAB) reported in May that commercial property premiums fell an average of 5.5% in Q1 2026, with 72 percent of respondents observing an increase in underwriting capacity.
Large accounts are now sharing in that relief. The first decrease for that segment since late 2017 reflects both the weight of capital in the market and the improving loss environment that gave carriers room to compete on price.
D&O returned to a small price increase this quarter after several consecutive quarters of decreases. That is a reminder that not every line moves in the same direction at the same time. The general insurance and products liability segments continued to moderate, while specialty lines held a small positive overall.
The softening is not uniform, and casualty is where that becomes most apparent. General and products liability, while moderating, has not followed property into outright decreases. US commercial rates data has consistently shown casualty as the fault line running through this market, with social inflation and nuclear verdicts keeping costs moving upward even as capacity grows elsewhere.
The 0.5% aggregate tells you the direction. It does not, however, tell you where a specific renewal lands. Account size, line of business, loss history, and submission quality all shape where a client ends up, and that variation is widening as the market softens.
In a soft market, coverage terms can narrow even as premiums fall, a pattern documented across commercial lines as insurers add exclusions to protect margins while competing on price.
WTW's CLIPS survey draws on data from 43 participating companies representing approximately 20 percent of the US commercial insurance market, state workers' compensation funds excluded. The survey compares premiums charged on policies written in Q2 2026 with those charged for the same coverage in Q2 2025.
