Bharat Maritime Insurance Pool Gets Rs 13,906.50 Crore Capacity

India's first sovereign marine insurance arrangement, the Bharat Maritime Insurance Pool (BMIP), is now working at full commercial scale, a Press Information Bureau backgrounder issued on 27 September 2026 set out. The pool was cleared on 18 April 2026 and began writing business on 12 May 2026 with an underwriting capacity of Rs 13,906.50 crore, about USD 1.5 billion.

Why the pool was set up

About 95 per cent of the value of India's trade and 70 per cent of its volume moves by sea, yet Indian owners bought nearly all of their liability cover abroad. They leaned on 13 international Protection and Indemnity clubs, which together cover close to 90 per cent of the world's large ships. Premiums for that cover alone drained an estimated USD 45 to 60 million out of the country each year. When fighting in the Red Sea and tension near the Strait of Hormuz made voyages riskier, foreign insurers pushed rates up or withdrew cover altogether, and Indian owners had no home-grown fallback.

How it is built

Member insurers in India issue the policies and then share the risk among themselves in proportion to the capacity each has pledged. A government guarantee of Rs 12,980 crore stands behind the whole structure. Claims of up to USD 100 million are paid from the pool's own reserves and reinsurance recoveries, and the guarantee is touched only after those reserves are exhausted. The General Insurance Corporation of India (GIC Re) runs the pool as its administrator, a Governing Body supervises it, and an Underwriting Committee vets the risks taken on. The term is 10 years and can be stretched to 15. Four classes of risk are written: hull and machinery, cargo, protection and indemnity, and war perils. Vessels qualify if they fly the Indian flag, are owned, managed or controlled by Indian entities, or are cargo ships sailing to or from India.

What it has delivered so far

By 7 September 2026 the pool had written 3,000 Cargo War policies, 92 Hull War-risk policies and 3 Protection and Indemnity policies. War-risk premiums have eased by roughly 35 to 40 per cent from the peak touched during the West Asia conflict. The first Hull and Machinery War policy went to Hoger Offshore and Marine on 12 May 2026, and the country's first Protection and Indemnity policy under the pool was issued to the Shipping Corporation of India on 30 July 2026 by New India Assurance. Cargo cover has also reached Vedanta Sterlite Copper and the sugar maker Balrampur Chini Mills, which shows that factories and commodity traders, and not only shipping lines, can draw on it.

The sector it serves

India works 12 major and 217 non-major ports, which together moved 1,668 million metric tonnes of cargo in 2025-26. The coastline runs 11,098 kilometres, the exclusive economic zone spans 2.4 million square kilometres, inland waterways cross 14,500 kilometres, and more than 30 million people earn a living from the sea. The Indian-flag fleet stood at 1,609 ships and 14.33 million gross tonnage in mid-2026, a tonnage rise of roughly 36 per cent since 2015.