Six errors in our war-risk premium reporting, March to July 2026

Issued July 22, 2026. We audited every war-risk premium figure this desk has published since the crisis began, against Lloyd's List (the trade newspaper), S&P Global Commodity Insights, Reuters, Argus, Marsh, Howden Re, the Lloyd's Market Association, and the Joint War Committee. Six errors, listed below with the corrected figures and the pieces they appeared in.

The audit covered price levels and attributions. It did not overturn the mechanism this desk has argued since March and still stands behind: Hormuz closed on underwriting, not on a collapse of cover. Poolable P&I and the CLC/Bunkers blue cards never lapsed. What lapsed were the discretionary, non-poolable charterers'-liability war-risk extensions, and the Joint War Committee's Listed Area designation is what drove the hull war-risk surge. That structural finding is unchanged. The price levels attached to it were wrong, and they are corrected below.

1. Peak overstated, March 23 to 28

Six consecutive briefs, from Five-Day Window through The Factory and the Field, carried the same sentence: hull war-risk premiums "at ~5% of hull value, spiking toward ~7.5-10% for the worst-rated flags, up from ~0.2% pre-crisis." Two deep-dives, Pipeline Politics and The 40-Day Balance Sheet, carry a variant dating the same 7.5-10% spike to "the late-March peak." S&P Global Commodity Insights put the Persian Gulf tanker rate at ~1.0% of hull and machinery value per seven days for the week ended March 27. Our figure carried no period basis; read against S&P's per-seven-days rate on a week-long Gulf transit, it ran roughly five times the reported market for six straight days. The real peak was earlier: 7.5% on March 10 (Lloyd's List), up to 10% paid by some stranded tankers in mid-March (S&P). The much-quoted "10% or more" was a Lloyd's List forward expectation dated March 11, not an observed trade. We printed a forecast as a print, and we dated a mid-March peak to late March.

2. Stale figure published as current, May 4

Project Freedom carried "~0.8% (post no-claims)" against a "0.10-0.15%" baseline and an "8x" multiple. Those are verbatim the S&P Global figures published March 30 for the week ended March 27, reprinted five weeks later as current. The gap that let it stand is worth knowing on its own: between April 14 and May 31, a 48-day stretch, we can find no dated Hormuz war-risk observation in public reporting. That is exactly the condition under which a desk should print no number rather than the last one it has. We printed the last one.

3. Rate attribution retracted, June to July

Crisis Fatigue, Carrier Home, Mines Uncleared, and the deep-dive Absorbed put war risk at 0.8-1.5% of hull value per voyage and credited the Chubb-Lloyd's consortium; our internal report credited the Joint War Committee. Both attributions are wrong. Lloyd's of London (the market) disclosed only the consortium's capacity ($200M hull and P&I, $200M cargo, live June 19), no pricing; those rates are set risk by risk through brokers. The Joint War Committee lists areas, it does not set rates. The figure traces to one OilPrice.com parenthetical of June 25. Specialist sources for that window reported ~2% of vessel value after discounts against a 3-8% headline. Retracted. Carrier Home, Mines Uncleared did flag the 0.8-1.5% against 3-8% spread as unreconciled and told readers to budget toward the higher end. That was the right instinct, and we should have acted on it then instead of carrying both numbers for a month.

4. Region mislabel, corrected in place

One Route Left carried a table row "Hull war-risk premium, Red Sea-transiting: ~5%." That was the Gulf-wide band for vessels that also transit the Red Sea, not a Red Sea rate. Reuters put indicative Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb war risk at ~0.3% of ship value on July 17, rising to ~0.75% on July 20 to 21. The corrected row reads ~0.3% of vessel value for the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb transit, with the Hormuz and Gulf-wide band shown separately at 3-10%.

5. Crew cost overstated, corrected in place

The Insurance Weapon listed a crew risk premium of "~$500,000+" per voyage. Under IBF terms, a Warlike Operations Area designation entitles seafarers to 100% of basic wage for days in the area, minimum five days, doubled death and disability compensation, and the right to refuse the voyage. For a 25-hand VLCC crew that is tens of thousands of dollars per transit. The corrected line prices the crew bonus at roughly $25,000 to $50,000 and labels it a crew bonus only. The unsourced non-crew portion of the old figure has been removed rather than re-estimated.

6. Baseline inconsistency, and the multiples built on it

We have published five different pre-crisis baselines (0.05-0.2%, 0.10-0.15%, 0.1-0.2%, ~0.2%, 0.25%), so every "N times pre-crisis" multiple we have printed depends on which one the reader picks. Outside sources disagree too, clustering near 0.25% (Marsh, Jefferies, Howden Re) and 0.1-0.15% (S&P Global). We are not going to resolve a disagreement the market has not resolved. We are going to stop printing the multiples. From here this desk publishes the absolute rate, the source, and the date, and where a baseline is needed we give the range and say who holds which end.

Root cause

Errors 1 and 2 are one habit: a paragraph carried forward without re-verification, pushing a mid-March number into late March and then into May. Error 3 is a second: a soft parenthetical hardened into a sourced fact by our own repetition. Errors 4, 5, and 6 are a third, and it is the one that made the other two hard to catch. We had no house definition of what a war-risk number measures. Which water it applies to, which product it prices, what period it covers, and which baseline it is measured against were all left to whoever wrote the sentence. Six errors, three habits.

What changes

Before a recurring figure is printed again it has to be re-verified against a dated source; if we cannot re-date it, we pull it rather than reprint it. We check an attribution against the primary document before naming the institution behind it. And every war-risk figure this desk publishes now carries four things on its face: the water it applies to, the product it prices, the period it covers, and the source with its date.

Sources

  • S&P Global Commodity Insights, Persian Gulf tanker additional war-risk premium, weekly assessments, March 30, 2026 (week ended March 27).
  • Lloyd's List, "Gulf war risk premiums topping double-digit millions of dollars per trip," March 11, 2026.
  • Lloyd's List, "US, UK and Israeli ships charged three times more than others for Middle East war cover," March 2026.
  • Reuters, Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb indicative war-risk cover, July 17 and July 20 to 21, 2026 (via Insurance Journal and BOE Report).
  • Argus Media, Middle East Gulf additional war-risk premium assessments, April 15, 2026.
  • Lloyd's of London, press release on the marine war-risk consortium, June 19, 2026 (capacity only, no pricing).
  • Lloyd's Market Association (Neil Roberts), hull war-risk levels, via Lloyd's List and Insurance Journal, July 2026.
  • Howden Re, Strait of Hormuz report, March 27, 2026.
  • International Bargaining Forum / ITF, Warlike Operations Area terms for the Strait of Hormuz.
  • Marsh and Jefferies, pre-crisis Hormuz war-risk baseline, via Reuters and Insurance Journal, March 6, 2026.

Report an error

If you believe we have published a mistake, write to [email protected]. Corrections run in the next brief and are recorded here.