How Has the Afghanistan Withdrawal Reshaped the DBA Market?
In August 2021, the U.S. completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan. Within 18 months, the DBA insurance market lost the single largest source of premium volume it had known for two decades. The ripple effects are still playing out in 2026, and they are changing the economics of DBA coverage in ways that affect every attorney handling these claims.
At peak operations between 2008 and 2014, Afghanistan alone generated tens of thousands of DBA-covered positions. ClaimTrove's database includes 29,902 contractor records from FOIA data covering all USG contractors in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2018. That data captured 5,273 distinct prime contractors and 12,456 contracts across 15 agencies. Each of those contracts required DBA insurance.
The withdrawal did not just reduce contractor headcount. It eliminated the sustained, high-volume premium base that supported multiple DBA carriers simultaneously. Carriers that built DBA-focused underwriting teams, claims departments, and actuarial models around Afghanistan and Iraq volume have had to recalibrate. Some have exited the DBA market entirely. Others have scaled back to a fraction of their prior capacity.
For attorneys, this market contraction means fewer carriers, higher premiums for remaining contractors, and an evolving claims landscape where the carriers still writing DBA policies are more selective about the risks they accept.
Which Carriers Still Dominate the DBA Market?
The DOL's authorized carrier list contains 637 carriers with DBA writing authority. That number is misleading. The vast majority of those carriers hold authorization but write zero DBA premium. The actual DBA market is concentrated among fewer than a dozen carriers that actively underwrite coverage and process claims.
ClaimTrove tracks carrier activity across multiple data sources: DOL case summaries covering FY2009 through FY2024, industry performance reports, BRB decisions, and OWCP coverage card filings. Across these sources, the same carrier families appear repeatedly: AIG (including ICSP and National Union Fire), ACE/Chubb, CNA, Allied World/AWAC, Starr Companies, Zurich, and a handful of others.
Market concentration has increased since 2021. When premium volume contracts, the carriers with the thinnest DBA books exit first. Mid-tier carriers that wrote DBA as a small part of a broader casualty portfolio have largely stopped. The remaining carriers benefit from reduced competition but face a smaller total premium pool.
This consolidation has a direct impact on carrier identification. Five years ago, an employer might have had its pick of six or eight carriers willing to quote DBA coverage. Today, the same employer may receive quotes from two or three. The reduced carrier options mean fewer carrier transitions over time, which paradoxically simplifies carrier identification for recent claims while historical claims from the high-volume era remain complex.
What Is Happening to DBA Premium Rates?
DBA premium rates are a function of risk, competition, and claims experience. All three factors are shifting simultaneously in 2026.
Risk profiles have changed with the geographic shift in U.S. contractor operations. Afghanistan and Iraq represented high-frequency, high-severity DBA environments. The current contractor footprint skews toward lower-risk locations: European NATO installations, Pacific theater support bases, African Union partnership programs, and diplomatic facilities worldwide. Lower risk should mean lower premiums.
But reduced competition pushes in the opposite direction. When USACE's mandatory CNA program ended in September 2013, contractors that had been paying mandated rates saw their premiums roughly double on the open market. A similar dynamic plays out whenever carrier options narrow. Fewer carriers means less competitive pressure on pricing.
Claims experience from the Iraq and Afghanistan era continues to affect rates. Long-tail claims, particularly occupational disease claims related to burn pit exposure, toxic substance contact, and hearing loss, are still being filed and adjudicated. Carriers factor this long-tail exposure into current pricing, even for employers operating in lower-risk environments today.
The net effect for 2026-2027 is a market where premiums remain elevated relative to the risk profile of current operations. Contractors in benign environments are paying rates influenced by a risk history that no longer reflects their actual exposure. This disconnect is gradually correcting, but the correction is slow because carriers are cautious about underpricing DBA after the losses some sustained during peak operations.
How Is Technology Changing DBA Claims Administration?
The DBA system was built on paper. LS-203 forms, coverage cards, BRB decisions published as PDFs, carrier authorizations maintained as static web pages. For decades, DBA claims research meant manual searches across disconnected government databases, phone calls to OWCP, and FOIA requests that took months to process.
That infrastructure is changing. The DOL has incrementally modernized its data publication, moving case summary reports from HTML tables to downloadable Excel files starting in FY2021. USAspending.gov provides API access to federal contract data that previously required manual searches. SAM.gov consolidated entity registration data that was scattered across multiple systems.
Private-sector tools are accelerating this shift. ClaimTrove aggregates over 1 million records across 18 federal data sources into a single investigation engine that produces carrier identifications in seconds. What previously required a paralegal spending hours or days across multiple government websites now runs as a single automated query.
The technology impact extends beyond speed. Automated alias resolution catches employer name variants that manual searches miss. Temporal matching against injury dates filters out carrier relationships from the wrong time period. Cross-referencing multiple data sources produces confidence scores that reflect the weight of evidence rather than relying on a single record.
For carriers, technology is changing claims administration. Automated medical bill review, predictive analytics for claims outcomes, and digital communication platforms are replacing the paper-intensive processes that characterized DBA claims management. These efficiency gains may eventually put downward pressure on claims administration costs, though the benefits have not yet translated into lower premiums.
What New Risk Environments Are Driving DBA Growth?
While Afghanistan volume has disappeared, new theaters of U.S. contractor activity are creating DBA exposure in locations that received little attention during the GWOT era.
The Pacific theater is expanding. U.S. military construction and base hardening programs in Guam, the Philippines, Australia, and Pacific island nations are generating contractor workforces that require DBA coverage. These are lower-risk environments than Iraq or Afghanistan, but the volume of construction activity means significant DBA-covered employment.
Africa represents a growing DBA frontier. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) operations span dozens of countries, with contractor support for intelligence, logistics, training, and base operations. The decentralized nature of AFRICOM operations means contractors are spread across many small sites rather than concentrated on a few large bases, complicating both insurance procurement and claims administration.
Eastern Europe and NATO's eastern flank have seen increased contractor activity since 2022. U.S. military construction, logistics support, and training operations in Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states require DBA coverage for contractor employees. This is a new DBA market segment that barely existed five years ago.
Diplomatic security remains a steady source of DBA claims. The State Department's worldwide protective security program employs thousands of contractors at embassies and consulates. Since the State Department reverted to open-market DBA coverage in 2012, these contractors purchase coverage individually, creating a dispersed carrier landscape that requires case-by-case identification.
What Should DBA Practitioners Expect in 2026-2027?
Several trends will shape DBA practice over the next 18 months.
Burn pit litigation will continue driving long-tail claims from the Iraq and Afghanistan era. The PACT Act expanded VA healthcare eligibility for burn pit exposure, raising awareness among veterans who also worked as contractors. Expect increased DBA filings from former contractors who were previously unaware of their coverage rights.
Carrier consolidation will continue. Mergers and acquisitions in the insurance industry do not stop at the DBA line. When a carrier family acquires another, DBA books transfer. Attorneys must track these corporate changes to ensure they are filing against the correct successor entity. ClaimTrove's carrier family groupings and NAIC-based tracking help maintain accuracy through these transitions.
Data accessibility will improve. Government open data initiatives, expanded FOIA processing, and private-sector aggregation tools are collectively making DBA records more accessible than they have ever been. Attorneys who adopt these tools will have a structural advantage over those still conducting manual research.
Premium rates may begin moderating as the long-tail claims from peak operations mature and carriers gain confidence in pricing the current, lower-risk contractor footprint. This moderation will be gradual and uneven across carrier families.
The DBA market is smaller than it was in 2014, but it is not disappearing. U.S. contractor operations overseas are a permanent feature of American foreign policy and defense strategy. The insurance infrastructure supporting those operations is adapting, consolidating, and modernizing. Attorneys who stay current with these changes will be better positioned to serve their clients.
ClaimTrove tracks every shift in the DBA carrier landscape across 18 federal data sources and over 1 million records. Whether your claim involves a legacy Afghanistan contractor or a newly deployed Pacific theater operation, the investigation engine identifies the correct carrier with source citations and confidence scoring.