Strait of Hormuz Monitor
What is the Strait of Hormuz war-risk insurance rate?
The Strait of Hormuz war-risk insurance rate is currently about 15x the peacetime premium (Lloyd's Joint War Committee data as of 2026-04-09) — around 1.5% of a vessel's insured hull value per voyage, up from roughly 0.1% before the crisis, roughly day 147 of the disruption that began 28 Feb 2026. On a $150.0M hull that works out to about $2.3M in additional war-risk premium for a single Hormuz transit, versus about $150K in normal times.
As of
What the war-risk rate means
Maritime war-risk insuranceis a separate, additional premium underwriters charge on top of a ship's normal hull-and-machinery cover when it enters a designated high-risk area — and the Persian Gulf / Strait of Hormuz has been a listed war-risk zone throughout the 2026 crisis. It is quoted as a percentage of the vessel's insured value per voyage, so the “rate” on this page is most useful expressed two ways: as a multiple of the ~0.1% peacetime baseline (currently about 15x), and as the resulting percentage of hull value a shipowner actually pays for a single transit (about 1.5%).
On a laden Very Large Crude Carrier whose hull is insured for roughly $150.0M, a 1.5% war-risk rate translates to on the order of $2.3M in added premium for one Hormuz crossing, versus roughly $150Kin calm times. That surcharge is the market's live price of perceived shipping risk, and it moves ahead of most other indicators: Lloyd's market underwriters reprice within hours of an incident, whereas trade and throughput data lag by days. Quoted rates vary by hull, flag, owner, and route, so premiums observed in the current window span roughly 1.2x to 15x the baseline; the headline figure above is the median.
Caveats.War-risk premiums are negotiated privately in the Lloyd's and London markets, so published multiples are indicative rather than a single fixed tariff, and the Joint War Committee's listed-areas guidance updates on its own cadence rather than continuously. The transit and throughput context on this page comes from IMF PortWatch (satellite-derived commercial ship arrivals, reported on a roughly weekly cadence) and from live AIS — which is self-reported and understates traffic, because tankers near Iranian waters routinely switch off their transponders (“go dark”), making AIS counts a lower bound. Treat these numbers as a well-sourced situational read, not a quote: cross-reference Lloyd's List, a broker, and your own underwriter before making shipping or trading decisions.