Hanover's second-quarter 2026 earnings release reports its Personal Lines book renewing at 8.7%, and reports the rate-only component of that same figure at 4.8%. Selective's release for the same quarter puts Standard Personal renewal pure price at 8.9%. Set 8.9 against 8.7 and the two books look within two tenths of each other. The comparable pair is 8.9 against 4.8, because Selective's metric already excludes what Hanover's headline number still contains.
Seven US carriers quantify renewal pricing in their own SEC filings often enough to build a series from, and among them they use six different definitions. The 236 datapoints behind the P&C Pricing Pulse span fourteen quarters from the first of 2023, and every one of them is filed under a definition its carrier wrote.
Key Takeaways
- 3.9 points separate Hanover's Personal Lines renewal price change from its own rate-only component in Q2 2026. The same wedge is 0.8 points in Core Commercial and 1.5 in Specialty, so no single haircut converts one metric into the other.
- 0.0% was CNA's Commercial rate component in Q2 2026 against a 2.0% renewal premium change, meaning the entire move came from exposure. P&C overall printed the same 2.0% on the same 0.0% of rate.
- Six definitions cover seven carriers: renewal premium change, renewal pure price, renewal price change, renewal written price increase, implemented rate change, and an average rate increase excluding workers compensation.
- Four of seven publish a retention figure alongside the price, so for the other three there is no way to tell whether an increase was achieved while holding the book or while shedding it.
- Q2 2026 is where W. R. Berkley's series stops, at 7.2% for Q1, because that quarter's release omitted the ex-comp figure. No rule requires the next one.
Six Definitions Behind One Word
Travelers and CNA both report renewal premium change, the estimated change in average premium on policies that renew, carrying rate and exposure together. Travelers put Business Insurance at 4.8% for Q2 2026 on 86% retention. CNA reported 2.0% for P&C overall on 83% retention, and its financial supplement breaks out the rate component separately, which Travelers does not.
Selective reports renewal pure price, the rate-only change with exposure stripped out, which makes it the cleanest rate disclosure in the group: 6.5% in Standard Commercial, 8.9% in Standard Personal, 3.4% in Excess and Surplus for the quarter. Hanover reports renewal price change including exposure and then publishes the rate-only figure underneath it. Hartford reports renewal written price increase, defined as the combined effect of rate changes and individual risk pricing per unit of exposure, running 3.5% in Middle Market and 10.4% in Homeowners.
Allstate's implemented rate change is a different animal entirely. It measures rate implemented during the quarter as a percentage of total prior year-end written premium, which makes it a flow. Auto printed 0.0% and Homeowners printed negative 0.1% in Q2 2026, and neither figure says Allstate's earned price is flat; both say almost no new rate was implemented in those three months while earlier increases continue earning through. W. R. Berkley reports an average rate increase across its book excluding workers compensation, last quantified at 7.2% for Q1 2026. Set Allstate's negative 0.1% in Homeowners beside Hartford's 10.4% in the same line and the same quarter: most of that 10.5-point gap is the definition, not the market.
| Carrier | Disclosed metric | Includes exposure | Q2 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Travelers | Renewal premium change | Yes | 4.8% (Business Insurance) |
| Selective | Renewal pure price | No, rate only | 6.5% (Standard Commercial) |
| Hanover | Renewal price change, rate shown separately | Yes, with rate disclosed | 7.8% headline, 7.0% rate (Core Commercial) |
| CNA | Renewal premium change, rate shown separately | Yes, with rate disclosed | 2.0% headline, 0.0% rate (P&C overall) |
| Hartford | Renewal written price increase | Yes, per unit of exposure | 3.5% (Middle Market) |
| Allstate | Implemented rate change, quarterly flow | No, rate only | 0.0% (Auto) |
| W. R. Berkley | Average rate increase ex-comp | No, rate only | Not disclosed; 7.2% in Q1 2026 |
Metric definitions and values as filed by each carrier; extracted from EDGAR and last refreshed 27 August 2026.
What the Definitions Do to a Comparison
A rate indication needs the rate-only component, because exposure change already sits in the premium base the indication is applied to. Counting it twice inflates the apparent adequacy of the book. Hanover's filing is the one place in the group where both numbers appear for the same segments in the same quarter, and the gap between them moves: 0.8 points in Core Commercial, 1.5 in Specialty, 3.9 in Personal Lines. One carrier, one quarter, and a spread wide enough that any fixed adjustment applied across a peer set would be wrong for most of it.
CNA's Q2 2026 disclosure makes the same point at the limit. Commercial renewal premium change printed at 2.0% with the rate component at 0.0%, so every basis point of that move came from insureds buying more limit or reporting more payroll and receipts. A trend selection built off the 2.0% would read two points of rate that the carrier states it did not take. Specialty, in the same supplement, printed 4.0% on 4.0% of rate, all of it rate and none of it exposure, which is why blending CNA's own segments into one figure loses the distinction as thoroughly as blending across carriers does.
Retention is the other half that mostly is not published. Travelers held 86%, CNA 83% on P&C overall, Selective 81% in Standard Commercial and 79% in Standard Personal. Hanover, Hartford and W. R. Berkley disclose no retention figure alongside their price series, so a reader comparing an 8% increase at one of those three against an 8% increase at Selective cannot see whether the first was achieved on a book that stayed or a book that walked. Price and retention move against each other, and half a picture of that trade reads as a full picture of the price.
A Series Ends When a Carrier Stops Printing It
None of these figures is required. Renewal pricing is voluntary supplemental disclosure, absent from the financial statements and outside the scope of the audit, so a carrier that stops quantifying it has broken no rule and owes no explanation. W. R. Berkley's Q2 2026 release simply omitted the ex-comp rate figure that had appeared in the prior quarters, ending the series at 7.2%. Travelers stopped quantifying Personal Insurance renewal premium change after Q1 2024, and that segment was dropped from the panel in August 2026 once a permanently truncated series had outlived its usefulness.
The same rule keeps carriers out at the front door. Chubb quantifies North American rate change on its earnings calls and not in its filings. Cincinnati's MD&A gives a "mid-single-digit range" and a "low-single-digit range", and charting the midpoint of a band would be inventing a number the carrier declined to give. Progressive quantifies only trailing twelve-month aggregates, which do not map to a quarter. Markel lists which lines rose and fell without figures. SCOR published a price evolution figure through 2025 and reported only premium growth and underwriting-ratio impact in its January 2026 renewal release.
What that leaves is a panel of carriers who have chosen, so far, to keep printing. A quarter that reads as an industry deceleration may be a quarter in which the firms with the least flattering number were the ones exercising an option they always held. W. R. Berkley's 7.2% is the last figure in a series whose next entry is a matter of one carrier's discretion, and the Q1 2026 value stays pinned on the page as a datapoint with nothing after it.
Further Reading
- Commercial Property Gives Back 6.3% to Fund Auto and Umbrella – broker survey pricing, measured on a different basis again from any of the seven.
- CNA's Q1 2026 Casualty Reserve Charge Flags Soft-Cycle Risk – the reserving side of the carrier whose rate component reached zero.
- Hartford Q2 2026: Short-Tail Releases Fund a Casualty Reserve Build – the quarter behind Hartford's renewal written price figures.
- Lloyd's Attritional Loss Ratio Crossed 51% While the Headline Ratio Improved – the same softening read through a loss ratio.
- Cyber Rates Fall a 12th Straight Quarter as Ransom Demands Jump 47% – filed rate separating from loss cost trend in a single line.
Sources
- actuary.info, P&C Pricing Pulse, the seven-carrier dataset and per-figure EDGAR links behind this piece
- The Hanover Insurance Group, Q2 2026 earnings release (EX-99.1)
- CNA Financial, Q1 2026 earnings release (EX-99.1)
- The Hartford, Q2 2026 earnings news release (EX-99.1)
- Allstate, Q2 2026 investor supplement