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Car insurance rate changes are not spread evenly across the calendar. Our review of the SERFF filing corpus shows a clear pattern of seasonal rate hikes: the share of filings that are hikes climbs steadily from January through December, and the weighted share hitting real driver counts climbs even faster. A filing approved in January leans toward a cut. The same filing approved in November leans hard toward a hike.
That drift matters more than a single scary headline number. It means the timing of your renewal, not just your ZIP code or your driving record, shapes whether 2026 treats you to a cut or one of these seasonal rate hikes.
Seasonal Rate Hikes Take Over the Filing Queue As the Year Goes On
In the first quarter of 2026, just 35.5% of directional filings in the corpus were hikes. The rest were cuts. By the fourth quarter, that share had climbed to 69.0%, essentially flipping the pattern from mostly-cuts to mostly-hikes.
Here is the quarter-by-quarter breakdown.
| QUARTER | FILINGS | HIKES | CUTS | HIKE SHARE (BY FILING COUNT) | HIKE SHARE (BY POLICYHOLDERS) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 (Jan-Mar) | 190 | 39 | 71 | 35.5% | 3.8% |
| Q2 (Apr-Jun) | 623 | 205 | 185 | 52.6% | 36.0% |
| Q3 (Jul-Sep) | 530 | 209 | 123 | 63.0% | 38.1% |
| Q4 (Oct-Dec) | 108 | 40 | 18 | 69.0% | 84.9% |
Source: InsuranceRateGuard.com analysis of the proprietary SERFF filing corpus, snapshot taken July 12, 2026 (tools/serff_study_6_analysis.py).
Split by half instead of quarter, the same pattern holds. The first half of 2026 ran 48.8% hikes by filing count. The second half ran 63.8%.
Average move size stayed close to flat across both halves. Hikes averaged about 4.9 to 5.0 percentage points either way, so this is not a story about bigger hikes late in the year. It is a story about more of the filings on the books being hikes at all.
Why the Policyholder-Weighted Number Swings Even Harder
Counting filings treats a small regional carrier’s 8,000-policyholder tweak the same as State Farm’s multi-million-policy rate move. Weighting by policyholders fixes that, and it shows the real swing behind seasonal rate hikes is bigger than the filing count alone suggests.
In Q1, only 3.8% of affected policyholders sat on a hike. Nearly all of the early-year policyholder impact was concentrated in cuts, largely because a handful of very large carrier cuts landed in January through March. By Q4, 84.9% of affected policyholders sat on a hike, a swing of more than 81 percentage points across three quarters.
The same pattern shows up comparing first half to second half: 23.7% of H1 policyholders were on a hike, versus 43.6% in H2. Whichever way you slice it, the biggest carriers increasingly put their largest-population rate moves on the books later in the year rather than earlier.
Why Rate Changes Might Cluster Late in the Year
The SERFF corpus does not tell us why carriers time seasonal rate hikes the way they do, so any explanation here is a reasonable read on the pattern, not a proven cause. A few mechanics plausibly play a role.
Loss data takes time to mature. A carrier reviewing claims trends from late 2025 and early 2026 would not have a full year of updated cost data until well into the year, which pushes some rate reviews toward the second half almost by default. Regulatory review adds more lag in prior-approval states, where a filing submitted in spring can take months to clear before it shows up in this corpus with a Q3 or Q4 effective date.
Competitive positioning may also play a part. A carrier watching rivals cut rates early in the year has less pressure to file its own increase quickly, and more reason to wait and see how the market settles before locking in a hike. None of this changes the finding itself: whatever the mix of causes, the filings on record right now skew toward hikes as the year goes on.
Methodology: How We Built This Study
This study pulls from SERFF-Data/national_queue.csv, the proprietary SERFF filing corpus Insurance Rate Guard maintains from public state insurance department filings. Each row is one state-carrier rate program with an extracted rate_change_pp (percentage point change) and a policyholder count pulled from the filing itself. We filtered to 1,451 dated filings with an effective date between January 1 and December 31, 2026, and grouped them by the month or quarter of that effective date.
“Hike share by filing count” divides the number of hike filings by the number of directional filings (hikes plus cuts, excluding flat 0.0pp filings) in that period. “Hike share by policyholders” does the same division using the summed policyholder counts on each side instead of the raw filing count. Both use the same 2026 effective-date window.
One caveat matters here. The data snapshot behind this study was taken July 12, 2026, so Q4 2026 filings are the thinnest slice in the corpus (108 filings, versus 530 to 623 in Q2 and Q3). Carriers are still filing rates for the back half of the year, and more Q4 filings will land in SERFF systems between now and December. Treat the Q4 numbers as directional, not final, and expect the count to grow as more filings clear state review.
Which Carriers Drive the Late-Year Tilt
Not every carrier follows the same seasonal rate hikes pattern. Some run hike-heavy all year. Others make a sharp turn.
State Farm shows the clearest flip in the corpus. In the first half of 2026, State Farm filed 2 hikes against 9 cuts, just 18.2% hikes. In the second half, that flipped to 5 hikes against 1 cut, 83.3% hikes.
Liberty Mutual sits at the other end. It ran hike-heavy in both halves, 78.9% in H1 and 80.8% in H2, showing a carrier that leans toward increases regardless of season.
| CARRIER GROUP | H1 HIKES | H1 CUTS | H2 HIKES | H2 CUTS | H1 HIKE SHARE | H2 HIKE SHARE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Hartford | 6 | 1 | 16 | 2 | 85.7% | 88.9% |
| State Farm | 2 | 9 | 5 | 1 | 18.2% | 83.3% |
| Kemper | 4 | 0 | 9 | 2 | 100.0% | 81.8% |
| Liberty Mutual | 15 | 4 | 21 | 5 | 78.9% | 80.8% |
| Acuity Mutual Insurance | 2 | 0 | 10 | 1 | 100.0% | 90.9% |
Source: InsuranceRateGuard.com analysis of the proprietary SERFF filing corpus (tools/serff_study_6_analysis.py). Table limited to carrier groups with 6 or more total filings across both halves to avoid small-sample noise.
The State Farm and Hartford moves stand out because both carriers had a mostly-cut first half and a mostly-hike second half, exactly the pattern the whole corpus shows in miniature. If your policy sits with a carrier that already ran hike-heavy in H1, the data here gives you little reason to expect a change in tone for the rest of the year.
The States Where Late-2026 Hikes Hit Hardest
State-level results follow the same seasonal rate hikes tilt, but not evenly. Looking only at the second half of 2026 and weighting by policyholders, a handful of states carry an outsized share of the hike total.
| STATE | POLICYHOLDERS ON HIKES (H2) | POLICYHOLDERS ON CUTS (H2) | HIKE SHARE (BY POLICYHOLDERS) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maine | 79,867 | 0 | 100.0% |
| California | 401,929 | 6,279 | 98.5% |
| Nevada | 238,227 | 7,775 | 96.8% |
| Connecticut | 187,089 | 11,581 | 94.2% |
| Pennsylvania | 1,198,682 | 129,413 | 90.3% |
| Arizona | 229,512 | 32,037 | 87.8% |
| Massachusetts | 763,045 | 111,678 | 87.2% |
Source: InsuranceRateGuard.com analysis of the proprietary SERFF filing corpus, H2 2026 filings only, states with fewer than 50,000 affected policyholders excluded (tools/serff_study_6_analysis.py).
Pennsylvania and California stand out because of scale as much as tilt. Pennsylvania has nearly 1.2 million policyholders sitting on H2 hikes in this corpus, more than any other state we tracked, while still running a 90.3% hike share among its directional filings. California runs an even steeper 98.5% hike share on a smaller but still substantial base of over 400,000 affected policyholders.
What This Means for Your Renewal Timing
None of this means every driver gets hit worse in November than in March. It means the odds shift as the calendar moves forward, and these seasonal rate hikes are visible in public filing data months before a renewal notice shows up in your mailbox.
If your renewal falls in the second half of the year and you have not shopped recently, the filing data gives you a reason to check your options now rather than wait for the bill. A fresh quote costs nothing, and it tells you what the current market actually charges, independent of which season your specific policy happens to renew in. Our rate tracker follows this SERFF corpus in near real time as new filings land.
How to Save on Insurance
Seasonal rate hikes are not something you can change, but they are something you can plan around. Here are five moves that fit this study.
- Check your renewal month against the quarter table above. A late-year renewal carries higher odds of a hike based on filings already on record.
- Get a fresh quote 60 to 90 days before renewal, even if your current carrier has not sent a notice yet.
- Look up your carrier in the table above. A carrier that already ran hike-heavy in H1 gives little reason to expect a change in H2.
- Compare at least three carriers side by side using the same coverage limits, so the quotes are an apples-to-apples comparison.
- Raise your deductible or drop coverage you do not need on an older vehicle if a hike lands and a full switch is not practical.
Seasonal timing will not eliminate a rate hike, but knowing where your renewal month and carrier fall in this pattern gives you a real window to act before the increase lands. Shopping ahead of that window is the single biggest lever a driver has over an increase driven by filings, not by their own record.
Sources Used
- InsuranceRateGuard.com proprietary SERFF filing corpus, snapshot July 12, 2026 (SERFF-Data/national_queue.csv; analysis script tools/serff_study_6_analysis.py)
- NAIC Auto Insurance Database Report
- Insurance Information Institute: Auto Insurance Facts and Statistics