For most of the last seven years, independent agents got a quiet assist every renewal season: rates went up, premiums went up, and commission checks — typically a fixed percentage of premium — went up right along with them. That assist has now reversed itself, and agency owners need to plan around it rather than wait for it to come back.
According to Marsh's Global Insurance Market Index as reported by Insurance Journal, global commercial insurance pricing fell 6% in the second quarter of 2026, the eighth consecutive quarterly decline after seven years of hardening conditions. Insurance Journal's coverage of the same Marsh data shows U.S. property pricing down 13% in Q2, also an eighth straight quarterly drop, with the steepest cuts — 20% — hitting catastrophe-exposed accounts carrying more than $1 million in premium. Casualty is the exception: Insurance Journal reports U.S. casualty rates rose 7% in Q2, though that's actually a deceleration from 9% increases in both Q1 2026 and Q4 2025, as claims severity and litigation trends keep pushing that line the other way.
The mechanism matters for any agency owner doing revenue planning. Insurance Business America's reporting on Marsh's own quarterly results makes the point plainly: at Guy Carpenter, Marsh's reinsurance broking arm, revenue growth stalled as the global property catastrophe rate-on-line index fell 16% at midyear — because broking commissions are tied to premium volume, and when rates fall that far, the revenue sitting on top of them falls too. Retail agencies run on the same math. A book of renewals that used to grow 10-15% a year on rate alone can now be flat or shrinking on a same-client basis, even with zero attrition.
Florida homeowners is where this shift is most visible to policyholders. CBS News Miami reports the state now has roughly 25 quality home insurers actively writing business, a level of competition a South Florida broker cited as a real turning point after a stretch of renewals carrying 50-100% increases with nowhere else for clients to go. More carriers competing for the same homes means more markets to shop, more leverage for agents at renewal, and more downward pressure on the premium base every agency's commission is calculated against.
This is where distribution structure becomes a real asset rather than a talking point. Public state licensing and carrier-appointment records show Florida agencies carry a median of 12 to 15 carrier appointments depending on metro — Tampa sits at 12, Miami and Jacksonville at 15 — versus a Texas median running 6 to 9 across Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. A wider appointment base is exactly what an agency needs when rates are softening: the ability to re-shop a client across a dozen-plus markets and land new business, rather than depending on one or two carriers whose pricing may or may not be competitive that quarter. Agencies at the thin end of that range — the roughly 5-7% of Florida and Texas agencies holding only a single carrier appointment, per the same public licensing and appointment data — have far less room to maneuver when their one carrier isn't the sharpest option in a softening market.
None of this changes the independent-agency ownership picture on the ground. Public records show 95.3% of Florida's roughly 9,945 P&C agencies and 99.7% of Texas's roughly 9,100 agencies remain independently owned, with consolidation platforms holding single-digit shares in both states. The softening cycle is a revenue-mix story, not a market-structure story.
What it means operationally: agencies that built their growth plan around rate escalation need a new one built around new-business production, cross-sell, retention through better marketing at renewal, and carrier access broad enough to actually compete for shoppers. Rate is no longer doing the work for you — and in casualty lines, where pricing is still rising on claims severity rather than easing, the split between property relief and casualty pressure means every renewal now needs a line-by-line conversation with the client, not a single blended increase.
For a fuller view of how carrier access and ownership structure vary by state and metro, see Pexara's Florida market intelligence.