The Markov group conjecture, a long-standing open problem in the theory of Markov processes with countable state space, asserts that a strongly continuous Markov semigroup $T = (T_t)_{t \in [0,\infty)}$ on $\ell^1$ has bounded generator if the operator $T_1$ is bijective. Attempts to disprove the conjecture have often aimed at glueing together finite dimensional matrix semigroups of growing dimension - i.e., it was tried to show that the Markov group conjecture is false even for Markov processes that decouple into (infinitely many) finite dimensional systems. In this article we show that such attempts must necessarily fail, i.e., we prove the Markov group conjecture for processes that decouple in the way described above. In fact, we even show a more general result that gives a universal norm estimate for bounded generators $Q$ of positive semigroups on any Banach lattice. Our proof is based on a filter product technique, infinite dimensional Perron-Frobenius theory and Gelfand's $T = \operatorname{id}$ theorem.