For nearly four years, independent agencies have operated inside a hard market that made growth feel automatic — rates did a lot of the work commission statements needed. That era just showed its first real crack. According to The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers' quarterly survey, reported by Insurance Journal, commercial P/C premiums declined an average of 1.2% across all account sizes in Q1 2026, the first time every account tier has moved lower simultaneously since the third quarter of 2017.
The pullback wasn't even. Large accounts saw premiums drop 2.7% and medium accounts fell 1.9%, while small accounts still grew — but barely, up just 1.1%, a sharp deceleration from the 2.8% gain small accounts posted in the final quarter of 2025, per the same CIAB survey. Nine separate lines of business recorded price decreases in the quarter, and commercial property led the retreat, down an average of 5.8%.
That property softening didn't start this year. CIAB flagged commercial property's first premium decline in eight years back in Q3 2025, a modest 0.2% dip that the group tied to a wave of new capacity — fresh carriers and MGAs entering the space, plus some players who had exited during the hard market coming back, alongside reinsurance pricing relief working its way down to insureds.
Commercial auto is the exception proving the rule. The line rose 5.8% in Q1 2026 — the largest increase of any commercial line — extending nearly five years of consecutive quarterly increases that CIAB, citing AM Best data, attributes to distracted driving, worsening road congestion, and the ongoing drag of social inflation and outsized jury verdicts.
Why carriers can afford to compete now is visible in the numbers. AM Best reported the U.S. P/C industry posted its best underwriting result in a decade for 2025: $1.11 trillion in direct premiums written, up 5%, alongside a combined ratio of 93 — a 3.6-point improvement over 2024. Homeowners multiperil results were the standout swing, moving from roughly a $1.5 billion underwriting loss in 2024 to about $16.8 billion in underwriting income in 2025. AM Best's David Blades linked much of that turnaround to faster rate-filing approvals and shorter regulatory review timelines finally showing up in earned premium. Commercial auto, by contrast, stayed underwater — a roughly $1.9 billion underwriting loss for 2025, improved from a $4.9 billion loss the year before, but still weighed down by mounting liability losses and about $2 billion in fresh reserve deficiencies, per AM Best.
For agency owners, this is where market position starts to matter more than premium volume. When carriers have fresh capital and appetite, they compete hardest where they can win the most business fastest — and that's frequently the small-account segment, exactly the tier where CIAB's data shows growth already stalling. An agency's ability to capture that competitive interest depends heavily on how many carrier relationships it can put in front of a client, not just how big its book is.
Public state licensing and carrier-appointment records illustrate how uneven that access already is. In Texas, independent agencies hold a median of 6 to 9 carrier appointments depending on metro, with single-carrier dependency running 6-7% — meaning a meaningful slice of agencies are effectively riding one relationship into a market that's about to get more competitive, not less. Florida agencies carry noticeably deeper access, a median of 12 to 15 appointments by metro, with single-carrier dependency as low as 3% in Jacksonville. That gap in carrier depth is likely to show up directly in which agencies can pivot their new-business mix as property softens and auto keeps hardening.
The takeaway isn't that the hard market is over — commercial auto proves it isn't, line by line. It's that the softening is selective, and an agency's carrier bench, not just its size, will determine whether the next four quarters bring commission growth or commission pressure. For a fuller view of carrier access and market structure by state, see Pexara's insurance market intelligence.