IUMI Says Blanket War Cover Is No Longer an Option: What It Means for Indian Exporters' Annual Marine Open Covers

The International Union of Marine Insurance held its annual conference in Rotterdam from 20 to 23 September 2026. On 21 September, IUMI issued a press release in which its president, Frédéric Denèfle, described how cargo war cover in high-risk areas is now being written. His central point was blunt: cover in those areas is generally offered "on a per-contract basis", not through the annual open cover arrangements that many cargo owners had relied on.

"Global, blanket cover is simply not an option anymore."

The release went further on what underwriters now need to price war risk. They want to know the specific trading and transit areas, the length of time a vessel is expected to spend in high-risk zones, and the time required to load and discharge cargo. Cover is given for limited periods, and the stated reason is to limit exposure to confiscation, expropriation, nationalisation and dispossession, grouped under the acronym CNED.

Business Insurance reported on 22 September that IUMI's president described marine insurers as facing "mounting uncertainty from war risks, competition, inflation and shifting trade routes", including rising confiscation and dispossession risk in wartime.

None of this is a regulation. IUMI is a trade association of marine insurers, and its statements do not amend any Indian policy wording. What the statement does is describe a market practice that Indian cargo owners will meet at their next renewal, or sooner, when an insurer or its reinsurers exercise the cancellation rights that war and strikes extensions already contain.

Most Indian exporters and importers with regular shipments buy cargo insurance through an annual open cover or a turnover-declaration policy. The cover is placed once, priced on projected annual dispatches, and individual shipments attach automatically on declaration. For many policyholders, war and SRCC (strikes, riots and civil commotion) were added as standard extensions at inception, priced into a single blended rate, and never revisited.

That structure works when war exposure is thin and spread across many voyages. It stops working when a meaningful share of shipments moves through areas where a single event can produce a large, correlated loss. IUMI's statement is the market saying, in public, that it no longer wants to carry that correlation inside a blanket annual rate.

Three features of the typical Indian programme that now matter

1. War and SRCC are often silent in the declaration process. The exporter declares invoice value, vessel and destination, but nothing about routing, transit time in a listed area, or port waiting time. Those are exactly the data points IUMI says underwriters now need.
2. The rate is blended. A shipment from Mundra to Rotterdam via the Cape and a shipment from Nhava Sheva to Jebel Ali often carry the same war loading, even though the exposure is very different.
3. The war extension is cancellable on short notice. The annual term of the open cover does not protect the war element, which brings us to the clause most finance teams have never read.

If your turnover has also grown sharply this year, the declaration problem compounds. The corpus covers that separately in re-basing marine turnover declarations mid-term.

Open covers that include war and strikes extensions on Institute Clauses carry a separate cancellation provision for those perils. Under the standard London market practice reflected in most Indian wordings, war cover can be cancelled by either party on 7 days' notice, and strikes cover on the same notice, with a shorter period of 48 hours for strikes cover on shipments to or from the United States. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the notice period, but shipments already attached before that point generally stay covered.

This is why an "annual" open cover is not annual for war risk. The insurer can withdraw war cover, or reinstate it on new terms and a new rate, within a week. IUMI's statement tells you which way that reinstatement is likely to go for high-risk areas: per-shipment or per-contract quotation, with voyage details supplied up front.

What a cancellation-and-reinstatement notice usually looks like

The insurer serves notice that war and strikes cover will cease on a stated date. It simultaneously offers to reinstate cover, often excluding named areas or requiring prior agreement for shipments to, from or through them, at a revised rate. Read the reinstatement terms against your actual trade lanes before accepting. The endorsement that reinstates cover is where the per-voyage requirement will be written.

If war cover for high-risk legs moves to per-contract quotation, the declaration that used to carry four fields will need closer to a dozen. Based on the data points IUMI listed, prepare to supply the following for any shipment that touches a listed or high-risk area:

• Routing and transit areas: load port, discharge port, any transhipment port, and whether the vessel transits the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb, the Red Sea or the Black Sea.
• Expected time in the zone: how many days the carrying vessel is expected to spend inside the high-risk area, which depends on routing and port congestion.
• Loading and discharge time: the expected time the cargo sits on board while the vessel works cargo at a high-risk port. Underwriters want this because war cover on goods generally attaches only while they are on the overseas vessel.
• Vessel particulars: name, IMO number, flag and operator, since confiscation exposure can depend on who owns and flags the ship.
• Value and packing: invoice value, number of containers or packages, and whether the goods are on a single bill of lading.
• Buyer and consignee country: relevant for the CNED element of the risk.

The waterborne principle matters here. Under Institute War Clauses (Cargo), war cover attaches when goods are loaded on the overseas vessel and ends on discharge at the final port, or after a limited period following arrival if they are not discharged. That is why time in port and loading time feature in IUMI's list: the longer cargo sits on a vessel inside a high-risk zone, the longer the war exposure runs.

Practical step: build these fields into the shipping instruction your logistics team already raises, not into a separate insurance form. The freight forwarder usually has routing and vessel data before the insurance declaration is due. Pulling it from the same record removes the most common cause of late or incomplete declarations.

A blended war loading inside an annual rate is easy to budget: it is a line in the insurance cost centre. Per-shipment war premiums behave differently. They are quoted when the shipment is fixed, they move with the geopolitical news, and they can be large relative to the base cargo premium on a high-risk leg.

Three practical changes help finance teams cope:

1. Move war premium from overhead to landed cost. Treat the per-voyage war premium as a shipment-level cost, like freight surcharges. That puts it in front of the sales team when they quote a price, rather than surfacing at year-end as an insurance overrun.
2. Agree a pricing trigger with key buyers. If your contract terms put insurance on you (CIF or CIP), a war premium spike lands on your margin. A clause allowing pass-through of documented war premium above an agreed threshold protects the deal. Who should bear the premium in the first place under CIF, CFR, FOB and DAP is covered in detail in the Incoterms allocation post on the Hormuz surcharge; this post does not repeat it.
3. Hold a lane-level budget, not a single number. Split annual war cost by trade lane: Gulf, Red Sea and Suez, Black Sea, and everything else. The first three will drive variance, and the others should stay close to the old blended loading.

Keep the separate premium visible on the certificate of insurance or the declaration acknowledgment, so a buyer or bank reviewing documents under a letter of credit can see that war and SRCC were actually in force for that shipment.

The risk in a per-contract market is not only higher cost. It is the gap between a shipment being fixed and cover being confirmed. If the open cover now excludes a named area unless held covered by prior agreement, a shipment that sails before the agreement is in place may have no war cover at all.

A pre-shipment routine for high-risk lanes

1. Flag the lane at booking. Any booking to, from or through the Gulf, the Red Sea or the Black Sea triggers an insurance check before the shipping bill is filed.
2. Request the quote with full voyage data. Send routing, expected time in zone, port time and vessel particulars to the insurer or broker. Incomplete requests are the main reason quotes arrive late.
3. Get written confirmation before loading. A broker email saying "held covered, rate to be agreed" is better than silence, but a confirmed rate and period is better still.
4. Watch the period. IUMI said cover is given for limited periods to cap CNED exposure. If the vessel is delayed beyond the agreed period, extend it before it lapses, not after.
5. Reconfirm on any change. A transhipment change, a vessel swap or a diversion is a new risk and should be notified.

For Saudi Red Sea ports specifically, the Joint War Committee's July 2026 change to the listed area already moved Jeddah and Yanbu into the additional-premium zone; the mechanics are explained in the Jeddah and Yanbu listed-area post. IUMI's statement adds the cargo side of that same tightening.

Importers face the mirror image. An Indian importer buying FOB or FCA from a Gulf or Black Sea supplier is the cargo interest from loading onwards, and needs the same pre-shipment routine on inbound legs.

Confiscation, expropriation, nationalisation and dispossession are the perils IUMI singled out when explaining why cover is now given for limited periods. They differ from physical war damage in one important way: a single government action can affect many vessels and cargoes at once, and the loss may not be a physical loss at all. A cargo can be intact and still be lost to the owner.

For an Indian exporter, two consequences follow. First, standard marine cargo war cover is not the same as political risk cover, and confiscation by a government is often excluded or limited in cargo wordings. If the goods could be detained or seized in a destination or transit state, check whether your policy responds at all, rather than assuming the war extension handles it. Second, the time-limited cover IUMI describes means that a vessel held in port or at anchor in a high-risk zone can outlast its insured period. A long detention is precisely the scenario where cover runs out.

IUMI's statement is a useful prompt to reopen the marine programme before the next notice arrives, rather than after. These questions get to the point quickly:

• Does our open cover include war and SRCC by default, and on what cancellation notice?
• Which areas, if any, are already excluded or subject to prior agreement?
• If high-risk lanes move to per-shipment quotation, what data do you need, and how fast can you quote?
• What insured period applies to war cover on a high-risk leg, and how is it extended if the vessel is delayed?
• Does the policy respond to confiscation or detention by a state, and if not, what alternatives exist?
• How will per-shipment war premiums be shown on declarations and certificates for letter of credit purposes?

Record the answers in the open cover file, share the lane list with logistics and sales, and set a review date. The exporters who handle this well will be the ones whose shipping instructions already carry the voyage data IUMI says underwriters want.