The Soft-Market BOR Pitch: Why “We Can Save You Money” Doesn’t Work the Way It Did in a Hard Market

What the Switch-and-Save Pitch Relied On

Between 2022 and 2024, a producer telling a prospect “we can probably save you money” was working with a market that made the claim easy to believe: rates were rising broadly and consistently, so a prospect’s current renewal was very likely higher than it needed to be. The pitch did not have to work hard, the market was doing most of the persuading.

That premise is the entire foundation the pitch stands on. When it stops being reliably true, the pitch does not just get harder to deliver, it gets harder to believe, for the producer saying it and the prospect hearing it.

The CIAB Numbers That Changed the Premise

The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers’ Q2 2025 survey put overall commercial rate growth at 3.7%, down from 4.2% in Q1, the thirty-first consecutive quarter of increases but a clearly decelerating one. Large-account rate increases fell even further, down to 2.9%, a 45% drop from Q1’s pace. Five lines, cyber, EPLI, terrorism, workers’ compensation, and D&O, posted outright declines that quarter, with D&O falling for a sixth straight quarter, down 2.5%. Commercial property increases moderated to 1.9%, down roughly 70% from Q4 2024’s 6.0% pace.

CIAB’s own Q3 2025 resource carried the headline “Soft Market Clear in Q3 2025.” That is not a producer’s marketing spin, it is the industry’s own trade association describing the cycle in its own words.

Why the Incumbent Agent’s Renewal May Already Reflect the Softening

Here is the practical problem the pitch runs into: a prospect’s current agent is working inside the exact same softening market a challenger producer is. If overall rate growth has already decelerated to 3.7%, with large accounts even softer at 2.9%, there is a real chance the incumbent’s renewal already came in flatter than the prospect, or the challenging producer, expects.

That does not make the switch-and-save pitch a lie, it makes it a weaker bet than it was in 2023, when the odds of the incumbent’s renewal being genuinely inflated were much higher. A producer who leads with a savings promise the market itself is less likely to back up is setting an expectation the actual numbers may not clear.

The Exception That Keeps a Savings Pitch Alive: Umbrella

Not every line softened. Umbrella rates spiked 11.5% in Q2 2025, driven by 135 nuclear verdicts in 2024, up 52% year over year, blowing through primary policy limits and pushing excess layers up sharply. For a prospect carrying meaningful umbrella exposure, the savings-based pitch still has real, current market data behind it, just not the same broad, every-line version that worked during the hard market.

Knowing which lines are still hardening and which have softened is what separates a producer making an evidence-based savings argument from one repeating a script that stopped matching the market a year ago.

What to Say Instead of Leading With Price

CIAB’s own framing of the Q2 2025 data describes carriers as “slightly more aggressive in pursuing large accounts,” meaning more capacity is chasing the same desirable accounts. That is a market where coverage quality, service responsiveness, and claims handling become the differentiator a producer can credibly lead with, because every competing agent has access to a similarly competitive rate environment right now.

A pitch built around what a current agent’s service and coverage cover, and what is missing, survives a softening market in a way a pure price-savings pitch does not, because it does not depend on the incumbent’s rate being inflated to work.

Why This Doesn’t Mean the Prospecting Stops

None of this is an argument for prospecting less. A signed broker of record letter wins the account in fewer than 10% of contested competitive bid situations, per Hylant’s analysis, in any market cycle, hard or soft, evidence that price alone was never the only lever deciding who wins new business even during the years the savings pitch worked easiest. Timing, relationship, and a credible non-price argument have always mattered; a soft market just makes them matter more visibly.

Human + AI SDRs keep new-business meetings landing on a producer’s calendar regardless of which pitch angle a given market cycle rewards, so the prospecting volume does not have to wait for the rate cycle to turn back in a producer’s favor.

Sources

The external data in this guide 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 P&C Market Survey
• Insurance Journal, CIAB Q2 2025 Survey Coverage
• Hylant, Broker of Record Letter

FAQ