5 Trends Driving the 2026 Property Renewal Market

What's happening

The property line contributed to a major percentage of the $105 billion in direct premiums in the 2025 US excess and surplus (E&S) market.¹ Still, new managing general agent (MGA) entrants raised market-wide competition, which drove down prices in the sector; large account rates decreased by as much as 25% to 35% during the fourth quarter alone. ¹

A major influx of capacity was due to European carrier interests in the market, along with the use of automated capacity tools that boost disbursement and accessibility.

Why it matters

A commoditized market signals more placement options that can be leveraged to pursue lower premiums and better coverage structures. However, new MGAs and alternate capital providers may have not yet paid claims and hence are yet to demonstrate how they will respond when losses occur.

For brokers, carrier stability is an important buyer consideration. Evaluating whether new entrants have proven claims capabilities, staying power and sustainable underwriting practices is as important as price considerations.

What's happening

For difficult, hard-to-place risks, complex, multilayered structures are becoming the preferred option to secure more tailored coverage than what a single carrier may offer.

Such shared/layered programs are especially valued in sectors where existing E&S structures have restrictive sublimit or deductibles, such as wildfires, flood exposures or other natural-catastrophe exposures.

Why it matters

For brokers, shared/layered placements can provide access to broader capacity, improve pricing tension and reduce dependency on one carrier. Public entities and pools are particularly suited to this approach because larger total insured values (TIVs) can be structured across multiple participants.

Shared structures help manage market volatility if current market sentiment reverses due to higher-than-expected losses or if a carrier changes appetite or exits a segment.

What's happening

With capacity and competition driving down prices, the US E&S commercial property lines saw a 2.8% decline in direct written premiums in 2025. This signals a shift towards oncoming cyclic downturn in the market.

In this environment, established carrier partnerships and incumbent relationships are becoming more important than ever, given their proven capacity through both hard and soft cycles.

Why it matters

As brokers strive to take advantage of current conditions, the most competitive price isn't always indicative of the best coverage.

Market participants are increasingly evaluating insurers on their ability to balance price with program durability. Long-term relationships play a key role, providing the required resilience through demonstrated claims-paying experience.

When underwriting conditions harden, these carriers can also help provide better sustainability due to their incumbent knowledge of the account's liabilities.

What's happening

While most property classes benefit from market softening, high-hazard high-risk classes, such as catastrophe exposures, data centers and heavy manufacturing continue to face underwriting scrutiny and capacity limitations.

Wildfire-exposed properties and data centers are seeing an emerging capacity challenge due to high replacement values and the "large-scale" nature of the exposure. Manufacturing classes such as woodworkers, recyclers and heavy/engineered manufacturing continue to require specialized underwriting attention due to complexity.

Why it matters

Not all available capacity can provide adequate capacity to such risks. This is why segmenting by factors like geography, occupancy, construction type, values and loss history can prove invaluable to brokers.

In cases of catastrophe exposures and data centers, insureds are also expected to demonstrate risk mitigation measures. For instance, having vegetation management, fire breaks and burying transmission lines in case of wildfires, or using diverse suppliers in the case of data centers.

What's happening

Data is becoming an important tool for assessing high-hazard risk exposures in the property market. Underwriters are turning to catastrophe modeling, portfolio benchmarking and other analytics to support decisions.

Even automated capacity tools leverage public entity and scholastic portfolio data to benchmark purchase limits and catastrophe sublimits.

Why it matters

Brokers and carriers can leverage data analytics to ensure more precise coverage decisions, justify limit requirements and improve pricing outcomes. In a market with abundant options, the resulting capacity, concurrency and precision become differentiators for a better coverage structure.