Workers comp is quiet, and this month even commercial auto moved to the fine print.
Every approved WC filing in the region this month was a decrease, a dividend plan, or a tiny single-risk filing — bureau costs are still trending down. Commercial auto is where the rate action is, but the biggest auto stories this cycle are structural: vehicle-history scoring, a multi-state towing exit, and coverage cuts (pages 2–3). Here's the rate that still bites your fleet clients — and an honest read on the rest.
Industries in this issue's filings
Lead Filing
Shelter's 14% Kansas auto hike hides a 36% penalty for $1M-limit accounts
Approved June 1, effective July 13. Shelter General's Kansas commercial-auto book — 2,941 policyholders, $3.9M premium — takes a 14% average increase, but the structure targets the well-insured: increased-limit factors rise for every single-limit above $300,000, so a $1M-limit account pays roughly 36% more. Truckmen (for-hire) base rates climb across bodily injury, property damage, collision and comp. The driver is a 2025 bodily-injury loss ratio of 189.7% — so this isn't the last word.
Also Approved This Cycle
Acuity scores your trucks' past lives across three states — up to +32%
Acuity adds TransUnion's Commercial Vehicle History Score (CARFAX-powered) to business-auto rating in Nebraska, Idaho and Oregon. Filed as a refinement, it swings premiums up to 27–32% on a vehicle's prior owners, title brands and odometer — things that happened before your client bought the truck. Contractor fleets running used work trucks feel it first.
The Hartford takes 16.5% in Missouri — trucks and service vans alike
The Hartford raises Missouri commercial auto 16.5% on average, citing social inflation and litigation costs. Trucks, tractors and trailers get +17.5% liability, private-passenger-type vehicles +18.8%, and uninsured-motorist +18.0% across both. Contractor service fleets and truck fleets carry it; the carrier is chasing a 15% return on surplus.
Where did the workers comp go?
Nowhere worth leading with — and that's the honest read, not a gap in our screen. Across the Midwest and Northwest, June's approved WC filings were loss-cost decreases, dividend plans, or single-risk LRARO filings; bureau costs keep trending down in most of these states. And this month, even commercial auto is mostly a structural story: the real moves are vehicle-history scoring, a multi-state towing exit, and coverage cuts. That's pages 2 and 3. When comp is soft, that's where your clients' premium actually moves.
The package and liability market is repricing Main Street — with credit scores, storm models and quiet coverage cuts.
Same screen, every other commercial line. June's big commercial books cleared here, and the pattern is consistent: carriers pair a modest headline average with a hard rebuild underneath — new credit and storm models, apartment and farm re-rates, exclusions bolted on at the same renewal. Habitational, agriculture, retail and hospitality are squarely in scope.
Industries in this issue's filings
Lead Filing
Next Insurance rebuilds Missouri small-business liability around your credit score
Approved June 18, effective July 31. The region's largest reported commercial book this cycle — 7,366 Missouri policyholders, $9.4M premium. The headline is 12.7%, but the new model does the real work: a 'No-Hit' credit factor of 1.61 for owners with thin credit files, a 2.465 multiplier for any claim in the last three years, a 1.47 day-care surcharge, and new minimum premiums that push general contractors and roofers to a flat $1,000. A clean loss record buys nothing if the algorithm can't find your credit.
Three Filings Worth a Closer Look
Auto-Owners hits Kansas apartments up to 60% — and cuts coverage doing it
Across a $33M, 4,238-policy package book: monoline apartments run up to +59.9%, monoline dwellings +54.8%, mercantile lessors +17.6%. The $100 deductible is gone (mandatory $250), and new mandatory exclusions arrive for PFAS, human trafficking and data-privacy — plus a broad abuse/molestation exclusion. The same program cleared in North Dakota (page 3).
Nationwide targets Missouri habitational — 85.9% indicated, some apartments +70%
Nationwide's BOP filing calls out habitational liability with an 85.9% indicated need; 134 apartment, condo and townhouse accounts see over 25% and 15 exceed 50%. Watch the fine print: business income shifts from 'actual loss sustained' to a fixed dollar limit — a quiet coverage cut — while new drone sub-limits and a townhouse additional-insured form come in.
American Family moves Missouri farms to ISO — up to 83%, capped at 25% a year
American Family shifts its $22.8M Missouri farm-and-ranch book onto the ISO Commercial Farmowners program, with uncapped individual swings as high as 83.1%. A three-year ±25% cap softens it — which in practice means many livestock and crop operations get automatic 25% increases three years running to reach the new level. ISO forms also tighten outbuilding and equipment definitions.
The Rest of the Qualifying List
| State | Carrier | Line / Sub-type | Severity | Policyholders | Effective |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SD | State Farm Fire & Cas | CMP — Package (business risk types +15.6%) | 4 / 5 | 5,221 | Aug 1, 2026 |
| SD | EMC (Employers Mutual) | CMP — Public Entities (muni +23% / schools +18%) | 4 / 5 | n/d | Oct 15, 2026 |
| MT | Cincinnati Insurance | General Liability — ISO 2024 class re-map | 3 / 5 | 2,698 | Apr 1, 2027 |
Also on the radar
The biggest book in the sweep barely moved. State Farm's Oregon commercial-package filing touches 23,846 policyholders ($53M) but nets out mild — condos +13.9%, apartments +6.5%, and contractors actually −7.7% — under the same Verisk/AIR storm modeling driving its South Dakota increase. Great American's $1.45M Missouri sports-and-wellness book takes a ~52% 'correction' while cutting medical-payment limits (page 3), and Auto-Owners' North Dakota package (3,065 policyholders) carries the same exclusion wave as Kansas. Reach and re-rates are running on separate tracks this month.
This is the month's real story: carriers are exiting programs, scoring everything, and quietly cutting what your clients can buy.
The rate pages were thin. This one isn't. A multi-state towing exit, third-party scoring on trucks, drivers, cyber-hygiene and business credit, and a fresh wave of exclusions — PFAS, respirable dust, Gen-AI, brokerage operations. When the headline rate is small, the change to the contract is where the risk lives.
Industries in this page's filings
Lead Filing · Market Exit — Multi-State Signal
Berkshire Hathaway GUARD exits the KBK towing program — non-renewing every policy
Approved June 19–29, effective October 28. AmGUARD (Berkshire Hathaway GUARD) is discontinuing the KBK Towing Program countrywide and mandatorily non-renewing every policy in it. The program administrator (KBK/Novacore) is moving the block to an undisclosed carrier, so towing operators get pushed into runoff — full runoff expected by October 2027. Companion filings cleared in North Dakota, Kansas (36 operators, $1.6M premium) and Idaho. When a program manager moves a whole block, the outgoing carrier usually saw something it didn't like — place replacements before the non-renewal date, not after.
New Scoring Models — Everything Gets a Score
Fortegra overhauls BOP with a credit score, exclusions and fees — +45% to +81%
Fortegra (Lyndon Southern) rebuilds its businessowners program: the loss-cost multiplier jumps 1.456→2.10 in Idaho (~45%) and 1.456→2.60 in Oregon (~81%). It adds a commercial-credit-score and years-in-business relativity, mandatory lead, asbestos, aluminum-wiring and pub weapons exclusions, a 6% technology fee and a 3.2% credit-card fee. Restaurants with heavy alcohol sales and contractors subbing over 30% get hit hardest.
Travelers scores your cyber hygiene — extortion +67%, social engineering +83%
Travelers reprices its Kansas cyber book and adds a 'Technical Security Factor' that scores each insured's security posture from third-party data (Bitsight/D&B). Cyber-extortion factors rise ~67% and social-engineering ~83%, with a 10% catastrophe load for aggregation risk. HOA managers, law firms (class factor up to 2.30) and healthcare are singled out; a stabilization rule caps renewals at +25%.
Sentry scores Kansas truckers on driver turnover and DOT data — +18%
A genuine for-hire trucking filing: Sentry Select takes 18% on liability against a 42.5% indication and adds a 'Scorecard Factor' keyed to driver turnover, LexisNexis driver scores, DOT inspection data and claim frequency. Extra-heavy truck-tractors and high-turnover fleets pay the most. The number that matters is the gap — 18% taken against 42.5% needed.
Market Exits & Underwriting Changes
Triangle exits Missouri motor-carrier and crime cover — and adds Gen-AI exclusions
Triangle drops the Motor Carrier and Crime segments inside its Missouri TriPack agribusiness program and bolts on new mandatory exclusions for Generative AI, assault or battery, and human trafficking. Agribusinesses with trucking fleets lose motor-carrier cover, farms needing standalone crime/employee-dishonesty limits lose them, and public-facing or ag-tourism operations lose assault-and-battery protection. It's the same TriPack retrenchment that hit Kansas last cycle, now in Missouri.
Great American reprices the Vantapro sports book +52% — and cuts medical limits
Great American assumes the Vantapro sports-and-wellness book — fitness centers, sports instruction, youth programs — calls it 125% underpriced, and pushes a ~52% 'correction.' In the same move it cuts Medical Expense limits from $25,000 to $10,000, raises hired-and-non-owned auto 70%, and hits per-participant programs +67%. Coverage down, price up, one renewal. A North Dakota companion runs the same play (129.9% indicated).
Coverage Contraction
Auto-Owners' exclusion wave reaches North Dakota — PFAS, abuse, $250 deductible
The North Dakota companion to Auto-Owners' Kansas re-rate (3,065 policyholders, $28.7M) carries the coverage cuts: a broad abuse-or-molestation exclusion, new data-privacy and unauthorized-access exclusions in the CGL, a mandatory $250 minimum deductible replacing $100, and a new Adjusted Value Provision on property. Contractors subbing over 10% of receipts and hotels over 10 years old face eligibility hurdles.
Liberty Mutual excludes PFAS and respirable dust in Washington
Liberty Mutual adds a total Endocrine-Disruptor exclusion to its Washington GL naming PFAS, BPA, phthalates and PFOAs, plus a broad Respirable Dust or Vapors exclusion for inhaled particulate and VOCs, and a state fungi/bacteria exclusion with a separate sub-limit. Plastics and chemical makers, woodworkers, dust-generating contractors and waste/remediation firms lose major coverage. A companion businessowners filing carries the same cuts.
Core Specialty caps truck physical damage at $1M and excludes brokerage ops
Core Specialty (Lancer) restricts its North Dakota commercial-auto forms with no rate offset: a total exclusion for brokerage/freight-logistics operations under both auto and GL, a hard $1,000,000 per-accident cap on physical damage — a de facto retention for any fleet with concentrated yard values — and new cyber/electronic-data exclusions. Motor carriers with a brokerage arm and fleets carrying over $1M of trucks at one location are most exposed.
Also on the radar
The scoring wave is bigger than these cards. Acuity's CARFAX vehicle-history model (page 1) is the commercial-auto version of the same trend, and Next Insurance's Missouri credit rebuild (page 2) scores small-business owners the same way. On coverage, Liberty Mutual's PFAS and respirable-dust exclusions also cleared in a Washington BOP (General Ins Co of America), and Fortegra's BOP overhaul is genuinely two states — Idaho at ~45%, Oregon at ~81%. If a client is a used-fleet operator, a towing company, or a plastics or waste business, their renewal contract changed this month even where the rate looked calm.
