The International Group (IG) reinsurance programme structure for the 2025/26 policy year has now been concluded.

1. Overall structure

The overall structure of the programme for the 2025/26 policy year is as follows (unchanged from 2024/25):

• Club retention : US$10 million
• Pool retention : US$100 million (US$90 million excess of US$10 million)
• General Excess Loss (GXL) cover : US$2 billion excess of US$100 million
• Collective Overspill cover : US$1 billion excess of US$2.1 billion

For more details, please refer to the attached diagramme.

2. Limits on the cover

Owner’s P&I cover is subject to the following particular limits as set out in the rules (unchanged from 2024/25):

• Oil pollution : US$1 billion
• Passenger and crew combined : US$3 billion
• Passenger (sub-limit) : US$2 billion

3. Excess War P&I cover

The excess War P&I cover will be renewed for 2025/26 for a period of 12 months. This will be included in the total rates charged to shipowners. However, due to the ongoing active war between Russia and Ukraine, the IG’s Excess War reinsurers have maintained their requirement for Territorial Exclusion language (consistent with exclusionary language already applied by reinsurers for Primary War P&I coverage) for vessels trading in these waters. For 2025/26 the Group has purchased aggregated sublimited cover of US$100m (increased from US$80m from 2024/25) from the reinsurance markets to cover the Russia/Ukraine/Belarus excluded risks.

4. The IG reinsurance rates for the 2025/26 policy year

To ensure the fairness of cost allocation between different vessel types, each year the IG’s Reinsurance Committee considers the vessel categories used. Having given due consideration to possible variations, the conclusions are that there should be no change in the number of categories at this time, but that there should be some adjustments to the relative rate changes having regard to each category’s historical claims performance against the GXL.

The 2025/26 rates are set out below:

Category	2025 rate (US$/GT)	rate change from 2024 (US$/GT)	% change from 2024
Persistent Oil Tankers	0.6258	+0.0095	+1.5
Clean Tankers	0.4337	+0.0355	+8.9
Dry Cargo Vessels	0.6054	+0.0191	+3.3
Fully Cellular Container vessels	0.8903	+0.1699	+23.6
Passenger Vessels	3.4390	+0.0548	+1.6

5. Renewal overview

Following a relatively benign Pool claims environment for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 Policy Years, the 2024/25 policy year has so far seen a move back towards a higher level of pool claims activity, more consistent with the 2019-2021 period, as well as the Baltimore Bridge incident. It has also been a slightly more difficult year for the Group’s reinsurance partners with an active hurricane season. Thanks to constructive engagement with our leader Axa XL and the rest of our panel of reinsurers we have achieved a fair renewal outcome for all parties.

For more information, please see the IG’s press release.