Surplus Lines and E&S Market Premium Growth Statistics 2026

The First Half of 2026, by the Numbers

Total US surplus lines premium reported to the 15 stamping-office states reached $47.6 billion in the first half of 2026, up 2.8% year over year, per The Insurer’s coverage of WSIA’s own data. Item and transaction filings rose faster than premium itself, up 16.9% to 4.3 million, evidence that growth in the E&S market is showing up in transaction volume, not just larger individual placements.

That 2.8% growth rate is a deceleration worth noting on its own. It sits well below the pace the surplus lines market posted across all of 2025, a comparison covered later on this page.

Where the Growth Is Coming From, State by State

California led all states at $11.4 billion in H1 2026 premium, up 4.0% year over year, followed by Texas at $9.8 billion, up 5.0%. Florida was the only major stamping-office state to post a decline, falling 5.6% to $9.4 billion, a genuine outlier against the growth every other major state recorded in the same period.

A single declining major state inside an otherwise growing national total is worth flagging for any producer working Florida E&S business specifically, since the state-level trend runs against the national headline.

Which Lines Are Driving the Growth

Non-professional liability led all lines at $18.8 billion, up 11.2% year over year and accounting for 39.6% of total premium, the single largest slice of the market. Auto liability rose 15.8%, professional liability rose 15.0%, and inland marine rose 12.3%, all growing faster than the market’s 2.8% blended average.

Property told a different story. Property premium fell to $13.6 billion, down 13.7% year over year, even though it still represents 28.5% of total surplus lines premium, the second-largest line after non-professional liability. Residential and homeowners premium, a smaller slice at 6.1% of the total, grew fastest of all at 20.2%.

A Full-Year Comparison, and Why the Growth Rate Is Decelerating

The Insurer separately reported that full-year 2025 stamping-office premium reached $90.3 billion, up 7.8% year over year, with item counts up 14.1%, a figure not yet independently re-confirmed beyond that report and worth treating with that caveat. Set next to the 2.8% growth rate recorded in the first half of 2026, the deceleration is substantial, from a 7.8% full-year pace down to roughly a third of that rate in six months.

That slowdown mirrors what is already happening in the admitted commercial market. CIAB’s own Q2 2025 survey put overall admitted commercial rate growth at 3.7%, down from 4.2% in Q1, evidence that the softening cycle already documented in the standard market is showing up in the E&S segment too, not only the admitted one.

What the Property Decline Signals for E&S Producers

This is reasoning, not a separately cited statistic: a property line falling 13.7% inside an otherwise growing surplus lines market is a different signal than the admitted market’s broader softening, since it suggests carriers are pulling risk-appetite dollars away from property specifically and redeploying capacity toward the liability lines posting double-digit growth instead. A wholesale or E&S-facing producer watching line mix has a real, sourced reason to expect property submissions to face more resistance than a liability submission in the same period.

None of this changes the overall growth story. The market as a whole is still expanding, just unevenly across lines, and unevenly across the one state bucking the national trend.

The Numbers

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.

• The Insurer, Surplus Lines Stamping Office Premium Volume Up 2.8% to $47.6 Billion in H1 2026
• The Insurer, WSIA Stamping Office Surplus Lines Premium Up 8% in 2025 to $90.3 Billion
• CIAB, Q2 2025 P&C Market Survey

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