The war-risk shock in the Strait of Hormuz has turned marine brokers into crisis advisers at the sharpest end of global trade. What began as a geopolitical flashpoint is now a grinding insurance emergency, with shipowners and cargo clients demanding answers on cover, cost and continuity while vessels sit trapped in one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints.
The insurance implications go far beyond the Gulf. In 2023, about 20.9 million barrels a day of oil and 10.4 billion cubic feet a day of LNG moved through Hormuz, according to the US Energy Information Administration. It also estimated this month that restricted flows have already helped force 7.5 million barrels a day of crude production shut-ins in March, rising to 9.1 million in April.
For brokers, one ongoing problem is clients’ fear of being left exposed when cover clocks down. Srinivas Prasanna, senior vice president and marine hull leader in Asia for Marsh, said the market’s first reaction when the conflict started last month was alarmingly short-term. “The panic button was really on and every single day these conversations keep happening because, when the conflict started, markets just gave seven days cover,” he said.
That was the moment the real broking pressure began. Some reports suggest up to 2,000 ships were stuck in the Strait. Currently, according to brokers and news reports, at least 800 vessels are still trapped. Marsh has exposure on roughly 100 of them through insurance arranged for shipowners, charterers and cargo interests.
“Everyone started asking, ‘You give me cover for seven days but what happens after seven days?’” After difficult negotiations, insurers stretched that position out to 30 days. Still, as Prasanna put it: “This back and forth creates anxiety.”
The anxiety is rational. Aon has warned that the Middle East conflict is forcing transport and logistics clients to think harder about alternative routing, structural flexibility between marine and war cover, and even GPS interference in the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.
The pricing tells the same story. Howden Re said war-risk pricing on some Hormuz transits had climbed from roughly 0.10%-0.125% of vessel value before the conflict to around 2%-3% in March, while spot Middle East-Asia tanker rates had nearly tripled. In this situation, marine clients are not only looking for indemnity; they are looking for interpretation. They want to know whether to reroute, whether to absorb higher premiums, whether to buy stopgap cover and whether markets will still show up for the next voyage or the next renewal.
The added risk complication for marine stakeholders is that the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz is forcing a rethink of other vulnerable corridors, including the Turkish Straits, Sunda and Malacca. “These are all vulnerable areas where you can get caught and, if so, what's the way out?” Prasanna said.
These wider questions are becoming central to the broker’s value proposition. Marsh has also warned that the Hormuz crisis is disrupting fertilizer and LNG supplies that underpin global agriculture, underscoring how quickly a marine war-risk event can cascade into even wider commercial pain.
The result is a harder, more selective market in which brokers are likely to earn their keep not by chasing the cheapest line, but by advising on resilience, rerouting, layered capacity and the realities of volatile insurer appetite. Hormuz is the immediate drama. The deeper story is that marine broking has entered a more anxious phase, where clients need strategy as much as placement and where every chokepoint now looks a little more dangerous than it did a month ago.
