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Hull war premiums halved in six days after the ceasefire, from ~5% to ~2% of vessel value, but London underwriters are not celebrating: rates sit ~20x above baseline and won’t normalize until the Joint War Committee de-lists the area. That de-listing waits on sustained safety and settled governance, which wait on the institution that does not exist. Frequency risk fell with the ceasefire; severity risk, the institutional part, did not. This post reads the insurance recovery and its institutional gate.

The Lloyd’s Market Association says it plainly: 88% of the war market still wants the hull business, cover is available — ‘the reason ships are not moving is not through a lack of insurance; it is… crew and vessel safety being assessed by the ship masters and owners as too high.’ The bottleneck isn’t money; it’s the missing institutional safety net — salvage, ports of refuge, casualty investigation, central safety certification. The underwriters just made the site’s argument for it.

War-risk premiums hit 4% of hull value for seven days — 4,000 times the pre-crisis 0.001%. Container spot rates rose up to 75%. About 100 boxships and 412 vessels in total sat trapped in the Gulf. The strait reopens in June, but the freight and insurance numbers normalise over two to three months — the long tail of the institutional vacuum, paid by every importer and consumer. This post reads the supply-chain bill the oil price obscures.

The strait has begun to reopen — three Iranian tankers out on 16 June, about seven ships since the announcement against a baseline of 120-140 a day. With the blockade lifted and the PGSA sanctioned, who assures a transiting ship arrives safely? Mines remain (clearance ~two months); administration goes to Iran-Oman with no Western role, but mine-clearing and escort fall to a UK/France/US coalition. Administration and assurance are split between parties who don’t coordinate. This post reads the assurance vacuum.

The contemplated MOU pledges to restore prewar shipping — about 150 vessels a day — within 30 days of signing. The strait is currently running at about two transits a day after 94 days of paralysis. This post reads the reopening as the logistics problem it is: a ~2,000-vessel queue unwind, an insurance market that normalises only on a track record, and the question of who actually sequences it all when the strait’s only candidate authority is SDN-designated.

On 18-19 May 2026, Iranian state-affiliated reporting disclosed ‘Hormuz Safe,’ a crypto-settled state-backed marine insurance product for vessels using the PGSA corridor. The launch lands the day after the PGSA formal announcement. This post reads what Hormuz Safe can and cannot do relative to the International Group P&I cover the global operator class actually uses, and what a treaty-backed authority would do differently.

Additional War Risk Premiums on Gulf tanker transits sit around 1% of hull value per seven-day period, with stranded tankers paying up to 10%. All 12 International Group P&I Clubs gave 72 hours’ notice cancelling parts of war cover in the Gulf. The underwriter-side gatekeeping is, in effect, a chokepoint closure no government has formally declared. This post reads what an institutional answer would change about that.

Six transits on 3 May, five on 4 May — Project Freedom’s first day. The pre-war baseline is approximately 138 vessels per day. Five is roughly 3.6 per cent of normal and is probably the lowest single-day reading in the present crisis. The operational ratio of approximately 3,000 US service members per transit, against a Suez Canal Authority ratio of about 150 staff per transit, is the picture of a convoy operation rather than an institutional one.

A fully loaded VLCC through Hormuz today carries six to ten million dollars of incremental cost above the January baseline. War-risk premium, freight uplift, IRGC toll, demurrage, P and I. Not one dollar funds pilotage, escort, or a published rule book. Suez charges an equivalent VLCC eight hundred thousand and includes all of it.

Private war-risk insurance hit 5% of hull value during the 2026 crisis, with cover withdrawing entirely at the peak. A structured 4% toll surcharge delivers the same risk function at a fraction of the cost — and actually funds the security capability.