Two Numbers, Two Different Axes
CIAB’s Q2 2025 Commercial Property/Casualty Market Survey recorded commercial rates rising 3.7% overall, the 31st consecutive quarter of increases, decelerating from 4.2% in the first quarter of the same year. Five lines, cyber, EPLI, terrorism, workers’ compensation, and D&O, posted outright rate declines that quarter.
Separately, the 2024 Big I and Future One Agency Universe Study found 56% of independent agencies now name carrier commitment to market among their top challenges, nearly double the 31% who said the same in 2022. One survey measures price. The other measures whether a carrier is still willing to write the business at all. They are not the same question, and 2026 is a year where the two answers are pulling apart.
What Softening Looked Like in the CIAB Data
CIAB described the quarter as one where soft market conditions were again evident, with carriers slightly more aggressive in pursuing large accounts, meaning more capacity chasing the same pool of preferred business. Large-account rate increases specifically fell to 2.9%, a 45% drop from the prior quarter’s pace. That is a market where a well-underwritten, desirable account genuinely has room to negotiate.
What the 56% Figure Measures
The Agency Universe Study’s 56% figure is not about price. It is agencies reporting that carriers are pulling back commitment, tightening appetite, or reducing capacity for specific classes of business, a challenge that has grown sharply since 2022’s 31%. Nearly doubling in two years is a documented, dated signal that carrier appetite is tightening even as the CIAB survey shows headline pricing easing.
How a Line Gets Cheaper and Harder to Place at the Same Time
Reasoning, not a new statistic: carriers chasing large, well-underwritten accounts more aggressively, as CIAB describes, is not the same posture as carriers maintaining broad appetite across every class and size of risk. A carrier can genuinely compete harder, and price lower, for the accounts it already wants, while simultaneously narrowing which accounts it wants in the first place. The CIAB and Agency Universe Study data points above are consistent with exactly that pattern, not a contradiction between them.
What This Means for a 2026 Pitch
Practitioner guidance: an account that looks easy on price alone may still take multiple submissions to place, particularly outside a carrier’s stated sweet spot. A producer pitching purely on rate is answering last cycle’s question. The more honest 2026 conversation names both realities, some coverage is getting cheaper, some is getting harder to find a home for, and a good producer knows which one a specific prospect is actually facing.
Qualifying Which Side of the Split a Prospect Is On
Sorting which prospects sit on which side of that split takes a real qualifying conversation, not a mail blast built around a single softening headline.
Human + AI SDRs can hold that qualifying conversation by text, surfacing a prospect’s actual line and class before a producer’s calendar gets a meeting booked on an account that turns out to be one of the harder-to-place ones.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- CIAB, Q2 2025 Commercial P/C Market Survey
- IA Magazine, Big I and Future One Release 2024 Agency Universe Findings