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Every year, Allianz Commercial publishes its Safety and Shipping Review, a data-driven analysis of global shipping loss trends, incident causes, and emerging risk themes drawn from claim data, industry reporting, and their own underwriting experience. This year's edition landed at a moment when the industry is navigating a degree of geopolitical disruption not seen in decades, and the report reflects that context directly. What it also reflects, however, is a more complex and

As of today, July 1, 2026, the United Kingdom's Emissions Trading Scheme has expanded to cover domestic maritime transport. For shipowners and operators running vessels on UK routes or calling at UK ports, this is not a future regulatory development to monitor, it is a live compliance obligation that began this morning. This post is a practical overview of what the UK ETS is, who it applies to, what it requires operators to do, and how it sits alongside the EU ETS framework t

China's New Maritime Code Is Now in Effect On May 1, 2026, four days ago, China's revised Maritime Code came into force. This marks the first comprehensive revision of the Code since its original enactment in 1993, and the changes are not minor adjustments around the edges. They affect cargo liability, limitation of liability amounts, the scope of who qualifies as a carrier, how damages are calculated, how limitation periods work, and, most significantly for international ope

There are moments in maritime history that redefine how the industry operates, sometimes just for a season, sometimes for years. We are living through one of them right now. As of today, March 26, 2026, the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage between Iran and Oman through which roughly 20 percent of the world's seaborne oil and global LNG once flowed freely, is effectively closed to commercial shipping. This post is an attempt to lay out what happened, where things stand, an