Commercial auto is the story across the Southeast — and the biggest carriers are leading the increases.
Every approved filing here cleared the same screen: rate increases, high severity, 1,000+ policyholders, disposed in April 2026. Commercial auto dominates page 1, with Travelers, Utica National and Selective all re-pricing fleets in the same window. Here's what your clients are about to feel.
Industries in this issue's filings
Lead Filing
Travelers' 16.8% Georgia average hides a 29% reality for heavy trucking
Approved April 13, effective September 1. Travelers re-rates its Georgia commercial auto book — 3,004 policyholders, $80.8M in premium — by an average 16.8%. Heavy trucks, tractors and trailers and ambulance services run hotter, with some Travelers Indemnity of Connecticut papers near 29.4%. A new 1.04 hired-auto multiplier kicks in whenever the vehicle owner is named as an additional insured. Travelers' indicated need was 33%, so this is unlikely to be the last move.
Also Approved This Cycle
Selective's 6% North Carolina average tops out at 60%
Selective averages ~6% across its NC commercial auto book — but the indicated need was 17.5% and individual renewals reach 60.3%. Funeral directors, auto-service shops and paratransit carry the heaviest deviations, and proprietary non-ownership rules give way to standard ISO procedures.
Utica National's 'catch-up' filing claws back discounts
A ~15% average increase across artisan contractors, wholesalers, food service and grocery (all near 16%). Utica says it plainly: it's reducing company deviations — pulling back earned discounts — to catch up to ISO loss costs. Clean accounts still pay more.
Tennessee's commercial auto wave keeps building
Tennessee saw a cluster of commercial auto rate filings clear in April — the largest reaching ~4,175 fleets at once with tiering and underwriting revisions stacked on top. No single carrier dominates; the trend is the story. Re-shop multi-vehicle fleets before renewal.
Where's the workers comp?
Comp stayed friendly in the Southeast this cycle. NCCI loss costs are flat-to-down across most of the region, and the large approved WC filings in April were favorable — Zurich even cut Georgia rates 26% for remote-heavy white-collar firms (see page 3). The exception that proves the rule: a client's comp can still drift up through tier moves even as the market softens. That contrast is your opening conversation.
General liability is re-pricing by class — and ISO just reset the floor for coastal package business.
Same screen, every other commercial line. GL and businessowners carriers are re-rating account-by-account this cycle, and an ISO advisory in South Carolina folds new hurricane modeling into the loss costs every adopting carrier builds on. CGL and BOP dominate the qualifying list.
Industries in this issue's filings
Lead Filing
Hiscox calls its Virginia contractor pricing 'inadequate' — and re-rates GL class by class
Approved April 29, effective August 17. The region's largest GL filing by headcount: 10,891 Virginia policyholders. Hiscox re-rates by class rather than across the board — property management +50%, artisan and manual-trade contractors +27.5% (the carrier's own word for its prior pricing is 'considerably inadequate'), retail and food service +20%, landscaping and floor covering +15%. A near-identical Hiscox filing landed in Tennessee the same month.
Three Filings Worth a Closer Look
NEXT bolts a class-scoring factor onto 13,309 NC accounts
NEXT lifts its NC base multiplier from 1.47 to 1.73 (a 12.7% indicated need) and adds a Class-of-Business Market Group Factor that swings premium by industry — day cares up to 2.06x, auto services 1.75x, specialty contractors up to +47%. A new Prior Sold Products exclusion drops coverage for anything sold before the first policy.
ISO folds new hurricane modeling into SC package rates
An ISO advisory loss-cost revision — the floor every adopting carrier inherits. Average ~9.5%, but sales-rated businesses land at +30.1% and lessors/occupants at +21.9%. The filing adopts Touchstone v11.0 hurricane modeling that now includes business-interruption losses, raising coastal Territory 2 hardest.
Hiscox runs the same 50% property-management play in TN
The Tennessee twin of the Virginia lead: property management +50%, retail and food service +20%, plumbing +20%, floor covering +15%, and one event-planning territory seeing loss costs up to +318%. A new schedule-rating table allows up to 50% discretionary credit or debit — your lever to soften a renewal.
The Rest of the Qualifying List
| State | Carrier | Line / Sub-type | Severity | Policyholders | Effective |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GA | Georgia GL Combinations | Other Liability — Combinations | 4 / 5 | 1,342 | Oct 1, 2026 |
| NC | Selective (Continental subs) | Other Liability — CGL | 3 / 5 | 6,343 | Sep 1, 2026 |
| NC | CMP / Businessowners filer | CMP — Businessowners | 3 / 5 | 1,006 | Jun 29, 2026 |
| SC | Professional E&O filer | Other Liability — Professional E&O | 4 / 5 | n/d | May 18, 2026 |
Also on the radar
Personal umbrella books moved hard but sit outside our commercial screen — worth knowing if your clients carry them: 26,470 NC policyholders on one personal-umbrella rate increase (approved Apr 9) and 4,750 more in NC (Apr 9). On the commercial side, a 13,309-policyholder NC GL combinations filing reaches into both rate and scoring — it leads page 3. And the ISO South Carolina BOP advisory won't bite until 2027 effective dates, but every adopting carrier is already pricing to it.
Scoring models are spreading from auto into small-commercial — and two carriers just walked away from a niche entirely.
Same region, the part of the filing the rate number hides: new scoring algorithms, underwriting-guideline changes and outright market exits approved in April. The throughline this month is third-party and class-based scoring moving deeper into Southeast small commercial.
Industries in this page's filings
Lead Filing · Scoring Model — Market Signal
NEXT scores 13,309 North Carolina accounts by industry — and drops coverage for older products
Approved April 10, effective June 5. NEXT's new Class-of-Business Market Group Factor assigns every North Carolina small-commercial account an industry multiplier — day cares up to 2.06x, auto services 1.75x, specialty contractors as high as +47%. A 7-tier administrative cost structure resets minimum premiums from $100 to $1,000. And a mandatory Prior Sold Products exclusion strips coverage for any product sold before the first continuous policy — a real gap for trades and manufacturers with legacy work. This is the rate story on page 2; here it's the structural one.
New Scoring Models — The Trend Is Real
Nationwide Agribusiness rates the driver and the balance sheet
A new Segmentation 'Loss Grade' plan, a Driver-Based Rating plan keyed to age, gender and violation history, and a financial-stability Risk Score now drive farm-auto premium. Private-passenger vehicles on farm policies climb up to 35.2%. The driver's record — and the owner's finances — now move the rate per vehicle.
NEXT's industry factor (see lead) reaches the widest book
The same Market Group Factor driving the lead applies across 13,309 accounts statewide, with the largest swings on child care, auto service and specialty trades. When a carrier prices by class code rather than the account, two identical shops can renew hundreds apart. Know your client's assigned class.
Market Exits & Underwriting Changes
AmTrust pulls its BANCSECURE bank-auto program out of Virginia
AmTrust (Security National) withdraws the BANCSECURE program for Virginia financial institutions entirely, effective May 1 — eliminating specialized rules for repossessed-vehicle and hired-auto exposures. Banks and credit unions that relied on those rules need a replacement market now, before the non-renewal notices land.
A bright spot: Zurich cuts Georgia comp 26% for remote-heavy firms
Zurich drops Georgia workers-comp rates an average 26.4% for technology, financial and professional targets, crediting remote and hybrid work for lower worksite exposure, and adds Life Sciences to its carve-out discount program at a 0.71 tier modifier. Proof the structural news isn't all one direction — and a quoting opportunity for white-collar books.
Coverage Contraction
A fuel-hauler program re-rates 50% and pushes deductibles to $15,000
Small book, sharp signal: American Summit (MGI Holdings) takes ~50% on a Virginia fuel-hauler program — physical damage up 65.9% — and introduces $7,500, $10,000 and $15,000 collision deductibles while swapping proprietary UM/UIM rules for ISO. Only three policyholders here, but it reads the way the fuel-hauling segment is being priced everywhere.
NEXT's Prior Sold Products exclusion is the coverage gap to flag
Worth isolating from the scoring story: NEXT's mandatory Prior Sold Products endorsement excludes claims tied to products sold before the inception of the first continuously renewed policy. For trades, manufacturers and retailers with legacy work in the field, that's a real completed-operations gap — review the endorsement schedule at renewal.
Also on the radar
The scoring wave isn't isolated: a Georgia farm-auto driver-based model (Nationwide Agribusiness, above) and NEXT's class factor in NC landed in the same month third-party data kept spreading through auto. Two Virginia commercial-auto market exits cleared on Apr 22 — the BANCSECURE bank program plus a second combinations withdrawal. And the favorable side is real: beyond Zurich's comp cut, several Southeast WC loss-cost filings trended down this cycle, so a rising client renewal usually means a tier or class move, not the market.
