Global commercial insurance rates fell 6% in the second quarter of 2026, the eighth consecutive quarterly decline and the steepest of the run, after 5% in the first quarter (Marsh, July 2026). Property fell 12% globally and 13% in the US. Casualty moved the other way, up 2% globally and 7% in the US. One index, two cycles, and a composite that describes neither of them.

Key Takeaways

  • Eight consecutive quarterly declines, and the sequence is steepening rather than bottoming: 1%, 2%, 3%, then three straight quarters at 4%, then 5% in Q1 2026 and 6% now. Every region printed lower.
  • 14 points now separate global property, down 12%, from global casualty, up 2%. The wedge was 11 points in Q2 2025 and 12 in Q1 2026, so the divergence is widening, not closing.
  • Roughly 17% above Q2 2024 is where chained US casualty written rate sits, against an 11% annual loss growth trend that compounds to about 23% over the same two years.
  • Barely more than a point of a 13-point gross property cut is clawed back by cheaper reinsurance, because the ceded tower is a minority of the premium base and the modeled cat load has not repriced.
  • A 1.9% decline was the final print of the 2013-2017 soft run before Q4 2017 flipped to a 0.8% increase inside one quarter. That cycle ended on weather, not on discipline.

Inside the Q2 Print: Every Region Down, Two Lines Apart

Marsh's Global Insurance Market Index has now declined for eight consecutive quarters, and the run is accelerating: 1% in Q3 2024, the first drop since 2017, then 2%, then 3%, then three straight quarters at 4%, then 5% in Q1 2026, and now 6%. Every region posted a lower composite. India, Middle East and Africa led at 16%, then the Pacific at 13%, Latin America and the Caribbean at 9%, the UK at 8%, Canada at 7%, Europe at 6%, and Asia at 5%; the US, at 2%, was the shallowest market in the index (Marsh, July 2026).

Marsh attributes the pressure to strong insurer profitability, surplus capital, lower reinsurance costs and higher investment returns. The line detail is where the composite stops being useful. Global property fell 12% after 9% in the first quarter, financial and professional lines fell 3% globally even as the US booked a 1% increase, and cyber fell 4% for a twelfth consecutive quarter (Insurance Journal, July 2026).

Casualty rose 2% globally against all of that, decelerating from 3% in Q1, and the US book does the lifting: US casualty rates rose 7% in the quarter, and 11% with workers compensation excluded (Insurance Journal, July 2026). A number that nets a 12-point property decline against a 2-point casualty increase into a single 6 answers a portfolio question, not a pricing one. The site's read of the Q1 index against combined-ratio quality made the durability argument a quarter ago; property has since moved 3 points further.

Chained Rate Level Against an 11% Severity Trend

Each Marsh print is a year-over-year change on programs renewing in that quarter, not a sequential move from the prior quarter, and that distinction controls the arithmetic. Multiplying the eight prints together produces a 26% cumulative decline, which is wrong: consecutive prints measure overlapping twelve-month windows, so chaining them double counts nearly the entire fall. The chain that describes a real account runs down the same renewal quarter in successive years.

An account renewing every second quarter renewed 4% lower in Q2 2025 and another 6% lower in Q2 2026, roughly 10% below its Q2 2024 premium. Two simplifications ride along: Marsh's figures average a shifting book of renewing programs rather than a matched sample, and the published prints are rounded to whole points.

QuarterGlobal compositeLine detail where published
Q3 2024-1%First composite decline since 2017
Q4 2024-2%
Q1 2025-3%
Q2 2025-4%Property -7%, casualty +4%, US casualty +9%
Q3 2025-4%
Q4 2025-4%US composite flat
Q1 2026-5%Property -9%, casualty +3%
Q2 2026-6%Property -12%, casualty +2%, US casualty +7%

Set the casualty chain against severity. The Swiss Re Institute's sigma study found US commercial casualty losses grew at an average 11% a year over the five years to 2023, reaching $143 billion, with the social inflation component alone peaking at 7% in 2023 (Swiss Re Institute, September 2024). Grant two to three points for exposure growth and per-claim trend still runs high single digits. Chained US casualty written rate stands roughly 17% above Q2 2024 while an 11% growth trend compounds to about 23%. Written rate treading water against severity, in the accident years now earning through, is the mechanism that built the 2016-2019 casualty reserve problem.

Property gives up more and recovers less than the ceded relief suggests. Take a program at 100 of premium in Q2 2025 spending 30 on a catastrophe tower. The gross renewal at 13% down brings premium to 87; the tower repriced at Guy Carpenter's 16% July 1 decline costs 25.2; net premium falls from 70 to 61.8, close to 12%. Inside the US book the decline concentrates where the hard market did, with cat-exposed programs above $1 million in premium renewing down 20% against 10% on non-cat programs below $1 million (Insurance Journal, July 2026).

How the Last Soft Cycle Actually Ended

The compounding above does not self-correct, and the 2013-2017 precedent shows why. That decline ran from Q2 2013 through Q3 2017, and its final print was a 1.9% fall in a sequence that had shallowed toward zero. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria plus the California wildfires then flipped the index to a 0.8% increase in Q4 2017, the first rise since Q1 2013, inside a single quarter (Insurance Journal, February 2018). The hard run that followed was still counting its 25th consecutive increase at Q4 2023.

Eight quarters into that decline, prints sat in shallow low single digits. Eight quarters into this one they are accelerating, three 4s into a 5 into a 6, which says capacity is still arriving faster than discipline. Marsh names the same contingency in advance: current conditions "are likely to persist absent a severe northern hemisphere storm season or string of major natural catastrophes" (Marsh, July 2026), per John Donnelly, president of global placement.

The index that would flag the turn is also the weaker half of the pair. It is renewal-level, year-over-year and mix-weighted, so a book weighted differently from Marsh's moved differently; within US property alone the two segments moved at 20% and 10%. And a Q2 2026 written decline earns through mid-2027, so earned rate level keeps falling into next year even if written prints stabilize this fall.

Loss experience is currently paying for the optimism rather than validating it. Gallagher Re counted $46 billion of global insured natural catastrophe losses in the first half of 2026, 28% below the 10-year average of $64 billion and down from $84 billion a year earlier. One benign half-year moves the historical average, not the modeled annual aggregate loss. The premium has repriced by a fifth; the exposure behind it has not.

Further Reading

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