War-Risk Insurance for a Hormuz Transit Has Gone From 0.25% of a Ship's Value to Between 3% and 10%. On a $100 Million Tanker, That Is the Difference Between $250,000 and up to $10 Million — Per Voyage — and It Is Priced Before Any Barrel Moves.

War-risk shipping premiums for the Strait of Hormuz have surged to between 3% and 10% of hull value, up from roughly 0.25% before hostilities began. In practical terms, a $100 million tanker that once paid about $250,000 for war-risk cover on a transit now faces $3 million to $10 million. Marcus Baker, global head of marine, cargo and logistics at broker Marsh, described the rates as a roller coaster tracking the oil price — rising sharply, falling back with the signing of a memorandum of understanding, then rising again as attacks resumed.

The mechanism is what makes this an early indicator rather than a lagging cost. Rates are set with reference to the Joint War Committee's list of high-risk areas, and a listing or expansion triggers automatic repricing across underwriters before any physical supply is lost — which is why premiums and tanker spot rates often move days ahead of a full adjustment in crude. The scale compounds with vessel size: industry estimates put war-risk cover for a 270,000-deadweight-ton crude tanker valued around $210 million at roughly $21 million for a single high-tension Hormuz transit, against $1 million to $2 million for the same vessel in the Red Sea. Underwriters have responded by shifting to voyage-by-voyage pricing, raising deductibles, and adding exclusions for cyber acts and specific weapon types, while offshore platforms in or adjacent to the strait have become effectively uninsurable on standard terms. The knock-on effect is not confined to price: some owners have bought the revised cover and still declined to transit, citing crew safety, and roughly 6,000 seafarers have at points been trapped in the region.

For the investor, this is the transmission channel that converts a military event into a consumer price with a delay long enough to be missed. Premiums of this magnitude are a per-voyage cost passed into freight rates, then into the landed cost of crude and refined product, then into the pump price that shapes household inflation expectations — the same expectations the Fed cites when it argues an energy shock is not safely ignorable. The reason to watch insurance rather than oil is sequencing: the premium reprices on a JWC listing or a single attack, days before the crude curve fully reflects it, which makes it a leading read on whether a flare-up is being treated as noise or as a structural change in the cost of moving barrels. 

Sources — The National, July 17, 2026 · S&P Global, July 22, 2026 · Nautilus Shipping, August 6, 2026

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