Commercial insurance rates fell 6% worldwide in the second quarter of 2026, the eighth consecutive quarterly decline in a softening cycle that keeps gathering pace rather than leveling off, according to new Marsh data. Property pricing led the drop while casualty rates edged back up, and one region — India, the Middle East and Africa — overtook the Pacific to become the world’s steepest-falling market.
Eight Straight Quarters of Give
Two years into the correction, the global commercial market shows no sign of finding a floor. Marsh’s benchmark index recorded an average 6% decline in worldwide commercial rates for the second quarter of 2026, a full point steeper than the 5% drop logged in the first quarter. The prior quarter’s numbers were milder still: a 5% decline in the first quarter of 2026, following a 4% decline in Q4 2025, meaning the softening has actually sped up over the past two reporting periods rather than tapering. Marsh counts the current run at eight straight quarters of falling prices, pointing to a market still flush with underwriting capacity and carriers fighting hard to keep business across nearly every commercial line. The broker detailed the trend the same week it reported its own quarterly numbers, where revenue climbed even as its Guy Carpenter reinsurance arm posted softer results — a reminder that pricing pressure and broker earnings don’t always move in lockstep. The underlying data comes from the market index Marsh publishes each quarter to track composite rate movement across its global book of commercial placements.
Property Drops 12% While Casualty Climbs Back
The two largest commercial lines are no longer moving in the same direction. Property rates fell 12% globally in the second quarter, even as casualty pricing rose 2%, with the split traced mainly to persistent litigation and loss-cost pressure weighing on the US casualty book, a divergence Marsh’s latest quarterly index singles out as one of the widest line-of-business gaps of the cycle. It echoes a pattern already visible in the property book specifically: rival broker Aon reported its own softening in US property pricing heading into this year’s storm season, even as capacity keeps flowing into the segment. Casualty’s uptick is small in absolute terms next to property’s decline, but it stands out precisely because nearly every other measured line is still falling — a sign that reserve strengthening and litigation costs in US casualty books are starting to outweigh the broader glut of capacity elsewhere.
Why IMEA Is Falling Faster Than Anywhere Else
The most striking shift in the quarter isn’t the global average — it’s what happened in India, the Middle East and Africa. IMEA posted the steepest regional decline anywhere in the world in Q2 2026, with composite rates down 16%. That’s a sharp acceleration from just three months earlier, when IMEA sat in second place among regions with a 10% decline in Q1 2026, well behind the Pacific’s 12% drop. In a single quarter, IMEA didn’t just narrow that gap — it overtook the Pacific entirely: the Pacific’s own decline deepened to 13% in Q2, still six points shy of IMEA’s 16%. Marsh’s Q1 report on how the Pacific and IMEA led regional softening earlier in the year offers a baseline for just how fast the reordering happened. The likeliest explanation is capacity chasing growth: underwriters that spent the past two years adding limit in mature Western markets are now competing harder for premium in IMEA’s expanding energy, infrastructure and trade-credit segments, where fewer incumbent carriers previously meant firmer terms. As new and expanding insurers price aggressively to win share in a region with historically thinner competition, composite rates move faster than in markets where capacity was already saturated.
The Rest of the Map: UK, Canada, Europe, Asia
Every other tracked region also posted a decline in the second quarter, just not one as steep as IMEA’s. Outside IMEA, the steepest of the remaining declines came in the UK, down 8%, while Canada, Europe and Asia posted smaller drops of 7%, 6% and 5% respectively. Latin America and the Caribbean rounded out the picture with a 9% decline, landing between the UK and Canada in severity. None of these markets moved anywhere close to IMEA’s pace, underscoring how unusual the regional reordering was this quarter. Other brokers’ own indices have tracked a similar directional story in specific markets — WTW’s own read on where US commercial pricing stood earlier this year pointed the same way, even if the exact magnitude differs by methodology and book of business.
What the Softening Means for Buyers and Brokers
For risk managers, the headline number obscures a more nuanced negotiation happening underneath it. Marsh’s global placement leadership frames the softening as a negotiation over more than headline price — carriers are widening policy terms, trimming deductibles and broadening coverage to keep and win accounts, rather than competing on rate alone, a shift the broker’s placement team describes as central to how renewals are actually negotiated this year. That matters heading into renewal: a flat or slightly lower premium quote may still come with meaningfully better terms attached, and it’s worth pressing brokers to negotiate coverage enhancements rather than assuming price is the only lever available. For carriers and reinsurers watching IMEA specifically, the open question is whether the current pace of softening is sustainable or whether it corrects sharply once new capacity finds its footing — a dynamic worth watching heading into Q3 reporting.
