Property premium across 15 stamping office states dropped 13.7% in the first half of 2026, yet the number of items filed rose almost 17% over the same period, according to WSIA's midyear report. More submissions chasing lower premium means wholesale desks are processing higher volume for less revenue per account - and that pressure shows up as slower turnaround unless the desk has the staff to absorb it.
That is the real context for CRC Specialty's addition of Zac Landress (pictured left) as a senior broker in Virginia, working CAT and non-CAT commercial property across real estate, hospitality, manufacturing, builders risk, inland marine and single-peril programmes.
No hurricane made US landfall in 2025, the first time that had happened in a decade - a pattern that coincides with CAT-exposed property rates falling between 15% and 20% last year, according to RPS market data. Reinsurance capital hit a record $785 billion at the close of 2025 - a figure AM Best and Swiss Re both reference in their annual reinsurance market reviews - giving carriers more room to compete on price.
On paper, that looks like good news across the board. In practice, an agent placing a barrier island account or an older frame building is still working against a different set of underwriting standards than someone placing a clean inland risk, regardless of what average rate movement suggests.
E&S commercial property premiums fell 2.8% across 2025, the first annual decline since 2017, but that number flattens a market that is splitting into two distinct placement experiences. Treating both as the same market is where submissions go sideways.
An agent with a tough CAT or non-CAT account - the kind that does not move through standard channels regardless of where headline pricing sits - now has one more specialist desk inside CRC's Virginia operation built specifically for that class of work. It is a narrow addition, but it is the kind that determines whether a hard-to-place submission gets picked up quickly or sits in a queue.
CRC Specialty has made two other rounds of additions this year that point in the same direction. In March, the company added underwriting team leaders in Tampa and Fresno, plus an underwriter in Charlotte, building out binding authority and small commercial capacity. In April, it added a casualty broker aligned with its Philadelphia office and two more underwriting team leaders, one in Houston and one in Minneapolis. Three rounds of hiring within six months suggests capacity is being built ahead of submission volume rather than in response to it.
Three further hires this month add to that bench. Daniel Conn (pictured right) joins CRC's Chicago office as a senior underwriter with a background in financial analysis and compliance auditing. Cheryl Gleason (pictured center) takes on an underwriting team lead role in Michigan after more than two decades across underwriting and claims leadership. Anita Lynn Robinson joins as an underwriter covering the Seattle area, focused on personal lines.
None of the current rate environment changes the underlying math for an agent working a difficult account. Average pricing will keep softening as long as hurricane seasons stay quiet - but the accounts that were hard to place two years ago are still hard to place now, for the same structural reasons they always were.
What is changing is how many specialists are available at the wholesale level to take them on. For a retail agent managing a book with barrier island exposure, complex mixed-use risk, or properties with claims history, knowing which desks have added specialist capacity in 2026 is a more useful piece of information than the headline rate movement that applies to the easy part of the market.
