Markel, the insurance operations within Markel Group, has announced a strategic collaboration with Midwest General Insurance Agency, a subsidiary of Acrisure, to expand its small business workers' compensation offerings in California.
Midwest specializes in small workers' compensation accounts and has operated as a managing general agency in the California market for more than 20 years, offering online quoting for its agency partners, alongside turnkey capabilities spanning marketing, underwriting, policy issuance, claims and loss control.
Mike Muma, Markel's managing director of workers' compensation and small commercial product, said Midwest's underwriting discipline was central to the decision.
"Midwest's data-driven approach to account selection aligns perfectly with Markel and our commitment to growing the book profitably. We have long been impressed not only by how they have managed long-term successful carrier relationships but also by their fundamental understanding of the California workers compensation insurance market," Muma said.
Max Carney, Midwest's CEO and founder, said the partnership reflected mutual respect built over time.
"We have long admired Markel in the California workers compensation market and are excited to collaborate. Between their deep knowledge of the California marketplace and our shared vision for risk selection and client service, we anticipate a strong and successful collaboration," Carney said.
The timing of this expansion is notable given where California's workers' compensation market currently sits.
California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara approved a 6.6% increase in the state's advisory pure premium rate effective September 1, 2026, bringing the benchmark to $1.65 per $100 of payroll, the second consecutive year of increases following a multi-year streak of rate decreases between 2020 and 2024. That had made California's comp market comparatively favorable for carriers and employers alike.
The Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California had initially requested a steeper 10.4% increase, citing rising cumulative trauma claim frequency and medical cost inflation running ahead of national averages as the primary pressure points, before the Commissioner's final decision settled on the lower figure following a public hearing process.
That advisory rate functions only as a statewide benchmark rather than a mandated price, since California has operated under an open rating system since 1995, meaning individual carriers like Markel set their own actual rates and expense loadings above or below the WCIRB figure, based on their own risk appetite and underwriting approach.
A data-driven MGA partner with two decades of California-specific account selection experience is a particularly relevant asset in that kind of environment, where a carrier's ability to price and select small business risk accurately, rather than simply following the statewide benchmark upward, increasingly determines profitability as loss cost pressure builds.
For independent agents placing small business workers' comp in California, Markel's expanded capacity through an established, turnkey MGA gives another option at a moment when rising loss costs are likely to make underwriting appetite and account selection more selective across the market generally, not just at Markel.
Small business owners renewing comp coverage this fall should expect the rate environment described here, driven by cumulative trauma claims and medical inflation rather than a single catastrophic loss trend, to show up in renewal pricing regardless of which carrier or MGA ultimately handles their account, making accurate class code classification and experience modification management more consequential to controlling costs than in the comparatively calmer rate years just prior.
