The Strait of Hormuz changed overnight. Has your risk management?
The Strait of Hormuz changed overnight. Vessels stopped moving. Carriers invoked force majeure. Rerouting costs landed without a clear answer for who absorbs them. Insurance policies assumed solid turned out to have clauses nobody had read. This is not an insurance failure. It is a risk management failure.
Migle Matelionyte has spent over thirteen years at the intersection of logistics operations, underwriting, and maritime law. She sees preventable losses every week — claims that should never have happened, companies exposed to consequences nobody explained before the shipment moved. In these unprecedented times, staying silent is not an option. The price of doing nothing is too high for everyone. That is why, for as long as there is urgency for timely knowledge, she runs a free industry webinar every other week — “Who is Liable for What: Carrier Liability, Exclusions & Insurance Explained.”
The misconception that costs millions
Carriers are not fully liable for your cargo. Under Hague-Visby, CMR, and Montreal conventions, carrier liability is capped — almost always at a fraction of commercial cargo value. The most dangerous misconception is that the freight forwarder’s liability insurance fills that gap. It does not. Logistics operator liability insurance covers the legal liability of the logistics company — not cargo value. Confusing them is the reason claims go unpaid.
Standard Trading Conditions are a matter of company survival. Without communicating limitations of liability, logistics operators risk exposing themselves to claims for full cargo value while transporting millions daily. In her newsletter Logistics Risks Simplified, Migle published a free template disclaimer setting out these limitations and the cargo owner’s responsibility to arrange their own cover. Use it. Send it. Make sure it is seen before the shipment moves.
When an incident occurs, the key question is whether the logistics provider had reasonable control — whether the loss arose from something within their power to prevent, or circumstances outside their custody and control. International conventions carry built-in exclusions — acts of war, public enemies, inherent vice, force majeure — outside the scope of logistics liability. Knowing they exist is the first step to relying on them.
What war risk cover on cargo insurance actually does — and what it was never designed to do
War risk cover sits as a standard extension on most cargo policies — rarely read, never discussed until it becomes the only thing that matters. For years it cost very little. Insurers carried it comfortably because war-related losses were remote. That calculation has changed.
When a region is designated a war risk zone, insurers invoke the seven-day cancellation clause — encountered by most policyholders for the first time right now. Sometimes that means unwillingness to cover at any price. More often it means the risk has changed so fundamentally that the original premium no longer reflects reality — and it can change daily. This is repricing, not refusal. The difference matters enormously to a cargo owner who assumes the door is closed when it may simply require a new key.
The moment a region is considered high risk, war cover for cargo travelling through it, or to and from it, is no longer automatically granted. It must be specifically requested. If you have not had that conversation with your provider, now is the time.
If you need to go further
Dealing with an active claim, an insurance programme you question, or contracts with subcontractors and warehousemen — where Migle almost always finds the insurance and liability clauses addressed wrongly — SureForth Risk Partners is the contact you need. SureForth brings together maritime law, logistics operations, and underwriting expertise to give businesses a complete view of their exposure. For companies without a dedicated risk function, SureForth can act as your outsourced risk manager. Sometimes one consultation at the right moment changes the outcome. You do not have to navigate this alone.
Prevention is the work. Everything else is damage control.
Migle Matelionyte is Founder and CEO of SureForth Risk Partners and Director Middle East & Europe at World Insurance Services (WIS), part of the WCAworld logistics network. She organises free workshops for the supply chain and logistics industry every two weeks, for as long as the urgency and the need for knowledge remain. Details of upcoming sessions are published on her LinkedIn profile.
