Marsh’s Q1 2026 Global Insurance Market Index, released April 22, reports that US casualty rates rose 9% for a second consecutive quarter while global commercial rates fell 5% overall, their seventh straight quarterly decline. The standout: US excess and umbrella rates jumped 18%, confirming that adverse severity is a structural US problem, not a global pricing cycle.
The global picture is one of softening. Property rates dropped 9% worldwide, with double-digit declines in the Pacific, Latin America, and the US. Financial and professional lines fell 6% globally. But US casualty moved in the opposite direction. Excluding workers’ compensation, US casualty rates climbed 12%. Casualty rates declined in every other region Marsh tracks, with portfolios lacking US exposure seeing the steepest decreases.
Marsh cited persistent claims severity, large jury verdicts, auto physical damage repair costs, and increasing attachment points as the primary drivers. The US composite rate declined just 1%, compared with 5% to 12% drops in other regions, entirely because of the casualty drag.
Who It Affects
Self-insured employers, captives, and public entities carrying general liability, auto liability, or umbrella risk. The 18% excess rate increase prices adverse severity into the layers above self-insured retentions, but the loss environment driving those increases operates across all layers. Construction firms, healthcare systems, transportation companies, and municipalities with large retentions should treat the excess market signal as a leading indicator for their own retained loss experience.
The Reserve Mechanism
When excess carriers raise rates 18%, they are repricing severity into layers that sit above self-insured retentions. That repricing reflects data excess carriers are seeing: larger verdicts, higher settlement demands, and longer development tails on serious claims. The same loss dynamics apply to claims inside the retention.
The 12% casualty increase excluding workers’ compensation isolates the pressure to general liability, auto liability, and umbrella lines. For self-insureds, this means severity trend selections in those lines deserve scrutiny. If your actuary is picking a 5% annual severity trend for GL or auto bodily injury while excess carriers are pricing an 18% rate increase, the gap requires explanation. Either the excess market is overreacting (possible, but the trend has persisted for several quarters) or the retention-layer trend pick is lagging reality.
Development patterns are the second concern. Large losses that eventually breach the retention take longer to develop to ultimate. If the excess market is seeing more large claims, some of those claims are currently sitting inside retentions as open files that have not yet developed to their ultimate value. That shows up as adverse development in later valuations.
What This Means for Your Next Review
Ask your actuary whether your severity trend selections for GL and auto liability are consistent with the loss environment that excess carriers are observing. If your program renews excess coverage midyear, request loss data from your excess carrier showing large-loss frequency and severity trends by accident year. Compare that trajectory to the development your actuary is projecting inside the retention. If the excess layer is deteriorating faster than the retention layer, your IBNR may be understated for the most recent accident years.
For commercial auto programs, the combination of rising verdict severity and increasing repair costs creates compounding pressure that affects both frequency and severity components of the reserve.
Watch next: Marsh’s Q2 2026 update in July for whether midyear jury verdicts sustain the excess casualty trajectory. The Triple-I/Milliman annual tort cost study, expected mid-2026, will quantify the cumulative social inflation drag on industry reserves and provide a benchmark for severity trend assumptions.