How Can AI Help Insurers Grow in a Soft Market? 

The mea team spent this fall’s event season with (re)insurers, brokers, MGAs and risk leaders from Monte Carlo to ITC Vegas to FERMA in Rotterdam to Insurance Today and Tomorrow in Frankfurt. Across those events, one concern  was hard to miss: the soft market is continuing to deepen. Global commercial insurance rates have now fallen for nine consecutive quarters, according to Marsh, with property rates down 10% in the third quarter of 2026 alone. Reinsurance is on the same path: analysts at Autonomous expect rates to fall another 10% to 15% at the January 2027 renewals, which would mark the full reversal of the hard market on price. 

For every part of the market, the question heading into 2027 is how to grow in a soft market that has now run for more than two years, when price, the lever the industry relied on for so long, keeps moving the wrong way. The answer starts with where the constraint is; in a soft market, its home is within the operation, which is exactly where AI creates capacity. 

Key Operational Takeaways: AI as a Growth Lever in a Soft Market 

• A soft market means more capital competing for the same risks, so price per risk falls and growth must come from writing more business. 
• When capital is plentiful, the limit on growth is how many submissions a team can review, price and quote. 
• Carriers decline or leave unquoted roughly one in nine broker submissions because of operational constraints, despite having appetite for the risk. 
• In US surplus lines, the number of policies and transactions written rose 16.9% in the first half of 2026 while premium rose 2.8%; teams are handling more work for less premium per policy. 
• mea’s agentic AI delivers up to a 40% increase in underwriting capacity, turning capital that is waiting to be deployed into business that is quoted and bound. 

Capital is No Longer the Constraint in a Soft Market 

The market is easing from a strong position, with a surplus of capital and rates that remain adequate, which ultimately begs the question: how will all of this capital get deployed in 2027? Discipline is about to be tested too. After three benign loss years, deductibles and terms are likely to start slipping without a major event. 

Capital, though, can only be deployed through the risks a team actually gets to. Every submission has to be read, cleared, checked against appetite, priced and quoted before any capital goes to work. 

Research published by ISG (Information Services Group) and commissioned by mea Platform found that carriers decline or leave unquoted roughly one in nine broker submissions due to operational constraints, despite having appetite for the risk. In a hard market, that business is marked as a missed opportunity. In a soft market, it is capital ready to deploy that cannot move while in-appetite risk goes unanswered. 

Meanwhile, the amount of work is growing faster than the premium it brings in. In US surplus lines, the number of policies and transactions filed with state regulators rose 16.9% in the first half of 2026, while premium grew just 2.8%, according to the Wholesale & Specialty Insurance Association. Teams are handling more business for less premium per policy. The cost of that work does not soften with rate either: roughly 12 to 14 cents of every premium dollar goes to operations against 3 to 5 cents of margin, and McKinsey notes that the P&C industry has not substantially improved its cost structure in 15 years. 

Where Growth Comes From in a Soft Market 

Lever	Who controls it	Direction into 2027
Rate	The market	Falling across property and reinsurance
Terms and conditions	Negotiated	Under pressure as competition increases
Available capital	The market	Abundant, at record levels
Transaction volume	Brokers and clients	Rising, particularly in surplus lines
Operational capacity	Each organization	The bottleneck, until the operating model changes
Speed to quote	Each organization	Decides which market the broker approaches first

The top half of that table belongs to the market. The bottom half belongs to the organization, and that is where growth in 2027 will be decided. 

How Does AI Create Capacity in a Soft Market? 

Agentic AI raises the operational ceiling without adding people. Submissions are classified, extracted and triaged against appetite on arrival; referrals route to the right authority; blockers surface with guided resolution; every action is audit-logged. A recent study from Munich Re found that up to 70% of underwriters’ time can be spent on administrative work rather than risk in a given week. When that administrative load moves to AI agents, with the context and the decisions staying with the people who make them, the same team can see and price far more of what arrives. 

Consider what that means against falling rates. As an illustration: if rates fall 10%, a carrier needs roughly 11% more bound business to hold premium flat. Quoting the one in nine submissions it currently misses would add about 12.5% more quotes. Conversion will vary, but on paper, the unwritten portfolio alone can offset a 10% rate cut, with no new distribution and no new appetite. 

It is also the route that protects discipline. In a soft market, the balance sheet has room to spare; the burden sits with the operation and whether it can get to every submission worth winning, again and again, through every renewal season. A team that can price every submission grows by choosing from more risks, with no need to discount the ones it already sees. 

Speed compounds the advantage. In specialty lines, the markets that can consistently quote first with a credible answer earn broker preference. As mea Platform’s Group CEO, Martin Henley, told Intelligent Insurer: 

“The overall prize here is capacity. You’re able to handle more new business and more submissions coming in. You’re able to quote faster and convert better.” 

Frequently Asked Questions About How AI Can Help Insurers Grow in a Soft Market

Why does operating capacity matter more in a soft market? Because it decides how much of the available capital actually gets deployed. When rates fall, growth has to come from writing more business, and that depends on how many submissions a team can review, price and quote. 

How can insurers grow in a soft market without cutting rate? By increasing how much business their teams can review, price and bind. That means quoting more of the submissions they already receive, responding faster than competing markets and lowering the cost per transaction enough to write risks that were previously uneconomic. 

How quickly can agentic AI add underwriting capacity? mea is live in weeks, with no AI training, no prompt engineering and no heavy configuration on the client side. It is non-invasive to core systems and modular, so organizations can start with the workflow that offers the clearest return, such as submission intake through mea Operations, and extend from there. 

The Operational Insight: AI as a Growth Lever in a Soft Market 

Three things hold regardless of where rates land in January: 

• Capital is abundant; the operation decides how much of it gets deployed. 
• Transaction volume does not fall with price, so every soft market asks the same team to do more work for less premium. 
• The cheapest growth available is the business already sitting in the inbox that the operation cannot reach. 

The organizations that come out of this soft market ahead will have used it to change their cost and capacity structure, so the next hard market finds them writing more business on a lower expense base. For 300 years, insurance has scaled the same way: more volume, more people. For the first time, the industry has access to a digital workforce that handles more work, faster, so capacity can grow with the market. 

At mea, our proprietary agentic system was built from the ground up on (re)insurance operations and has processed more than $450 billion in gross written premium for 30+ clients across 20+ countries. Our insurance-native AI owns the repeatable operational work across ingestion, underwriting, claims, finance and broking, freeing your underwriters to own the risk selection and judgment calls that win the business worth writing. 

That is how to grow in a soft market. Capital is not the constraint. The operation is. 

AI agents own the repeatable. People own the consequential.