The Insurance Market Is Softening. Your Van Policy Didn't Get the Memo.

Commercial insurance buyers got a rate cut in the second quarter of 2026. Fleet owners did not. Commercial auto insurance rates rose 4.5% in the quarter while premiums across all accounts fell an average of 2%, and umbrella rose 5.3%, its 35th consecutive quarterly increase. Those are the two lines every appliance and HVAC shop with a van on the road has to buy.

The numbers come from the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers quarterly market survey. CIAB's own site blocked repeated attempts to retrieve the release, so the figures here are as reported by Insurance Journal's Chad Hemenway on August 20, 2026.

Every other line in the survey reads like a different market. Commercial property fell 6.3%. Workers' compensation and cyber each fell 3.2%. Small accounts, the category most service businesses land in, came down 0.5%, while large accounts got 3.7% back.

The broader market softening is real, but it isn't distributed to the lines you spend the most on.

What is pushing commercial auto insurance rates the other way

In the first quarter, premiums fell 1.2% overall, small accounts actually rose 1.1%, and commercial auto climbed 5.8%, the most of any line for the third straight quarter. Insurance Journal's write-up of that survey said the line had risen every quarter for nearly five years, citing "distracted driving and congested roads leading to high claims frequency," with "social inflation and nuclear verdicts" amplifying claim severity. CIAB credited AM Best for that read.

Marsh's Global Insurance Market Index, published July 23, 2026, points the same direction from a different vantage: the global composite rate down 6% in the second quarter, the US composite down 2%, US property down 13%, and US casualty up 7%, easing from a 9% increase in the first quarter. Those are broker-placed accounts far larger than a five-truck shop's. Read them as direction, not forecast.

The severity argument now has a dollar figure. The Insurance Information Institute and the Casualty Actuarial Society released an analysis on October 30, 2025, co-authored by James Lynch and William Nibbelin, titled Increasing Inflation on Liability Insurance: Impact as of Year-End 2024. It put the cost of what the release calls legal system abuse at $231.6 billion to $281.2 billion in added liability losses over the previous decade. For commercial auto liability specifically, the range was $52.0 billion to $70.8 billion, or 22.6% to 30.8% of booked losses.

Between a fifth and nearly a third of commercial auto liability losses over 10 years is attributed to litigation dynamics rather than to crashes getting more expensive on their own.

Why the average is not your renewal

None of this predicts your carrier's November renewal. Market averages describe a book of business that includes long-haul trucking, delivery fleets and contractors with 200 units. Your renewal is rated off your own file: vehicle count and values, radius, garaging address, driver motor vehicle records, limits and deductibles, and three to five years of loss runs.

Two shops in the same county can move in opposite directions in the same quarter. One at-fault injury claim with an attorney letter attached will outweigh anything CIAB reports.

For planning purposes, if you budget flat and the line rises mid-single digits two years running, you have quietly absorbed a real cost increase in the only fixed expense that scales directly with truck count. Shops running a written vehicle policy, pulling MVRs at renewal and tracking their own at-fault rate have something to bring to an underwriter besides hope, and the operational side of that is covered in our fleet management guide.

Check the physical damage and tools coverage riding alongside the liability limit. A van gets totaled with $14,000 of test equipment and inventory inside it, and the auto policy does not answer for the contents. That gap is its own conversation, laid out in the tools and equipment coverage guide.

States are starting to push back

Two 2025 laws target the drivers brokers keep citing.

Louisiana took the direct route. House Bill 549 of the 2025 regular session became Act 19, signed May 28, 2025 and effective January 1, 2026, and its official summary is plain: it "provides a premium discount for commercial motor vehicles with dashboard cameras and telematics systems." The size of the required discount and the precise vehicle definition sit in the enrolled bill text, not the summary, so a Louisiana operator should have a broker read the act before assuming a specific credit.

Georgia went after the litigation side instead. Governor Brian Kemp signed Senate Bills 68 and 69 on April 21, 2025, a package his office presented as an effort to stabilize insurance costs for businesses and consumers. Among other changes, SB 68 made evidence of seat belt non-use admissible and tightened the proof required for medical damages.

Neither law has produced enough loss data to say whether it moves rates. Both are the kind of change that shows up in pricing years after it shows up in the statute books.

CIAB's third-quarter survey is due later this fall, and it will be the first read on whether commercial auto's run has finally started to flatten. Nothing here tells you what your own policy covers or whether a given claim will be paid. That depends on your policy form, your endorsements, your carrier and your state, and it is a question for a licensed broker before your renewal date rather than after it. If you want a starting range before that conversation, the insurance cost estimator and the state requirements pages will get you in the neighborhood.

Sources

Hemenway, C. (2026). "CIAB Survey: Overall Soft Market Conditions Continue in Q2." Insurance Journal, August 20, 2026, reporting the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers Q2 2026 Commercial Property/Casualty Market Survey. insurancejournal.com

Hemenway, C. (2026). "'Decisive Sign of a Softened Market': Premiums Decrease Across All Accounts." Insurance Journal, May 22, 2026, reporting the CIAB Q1 2026 survey. insurancejournal.com

Marsh. (2026). Global Insurance Market Index, Q2 2026, released July 23, 2026. marsh.com

Lynch, J., and Nibbelin, W. (2025). Increasing Inflation on Liability Insurance: Impact as of Year-End 2024. Insurance Information Institute and Casualty Actuarial Society, October 30, 2025. iii.org press release

Louisiana State Legislature. (2025). House Bill 549, 2025 Regular Session, enacted as Act 19. legis.la.gov

Office of the Governor of Georgia. (2025). "Gov. Kemp Signs Historic Legislation Delivering Commonsense, Meaningful Tort Reform," April 21, 2025. gov.georgia.gov

Georgia General Assembly. (2025). Senate Bill 68, 2025-2026 Regular Session. legis.ga.gov