The 2026/27 P&I Reinsurance Rates: Containers Up 15 Percent, Everything Else Down

The International Group of P&I Clubs finalized its reinsurance arrangements for the 2026/27 policy year, effective from noon on 20 February 2026. Four of the five vessel categories got a rate reduction. One did not.

Fully cellular container ships went up 15 percent, to $1.0237 per gross ton. Persistent oil tankers fell 8 percent, dry cargo fell 5 percent, passenger vessels fell 8.5 percent, and clean tankers were held flat.

For a container operator, that is a cost increase arriving in a year when the pool claims environment was described by the clubs as relatively benign. Understanding why requires knowing what this charge actually is, and most owners treat it as part of their club premium when it is a separate, published, non-negotiable number.

Two Numbers, Not One

Your P&I cost has two components and they behave entirely differently.

The club premium is what your club charges you. It reflects your loss record, your fleet, your trading pattern, your management, and your negotiation. It is where a broker earns their keep and where a good record is worth money.

The International Group reinsurance charge is your share of the Group's General Excess of Loss contract, the GXL. It is set by vessel category, published annually, charged per gross ton, and identical for every owner in that category regardless of how well you run your ships.

A spotless container operator and a marginal one both pay $1.0237 per gross ton in 2026/27. The charge includes the Hydra captive premium, collective overspill cover, excess war risks P&I, and the MLC market reinsurance cover, all bundled into the single rate.

That distinction matters at renewal. If your total P&I cost rose and your club premium did not, the GXL rate is where the increase came from, and no amount of negotiation moves it.

The 2026/27 Rates

Published across the club circulars, effective 20 February 2026, in U.S. dollars per gross ton:

Tankers carrying persistent oil at $0.5758, down 8.0 percent.

Tankers carrying non-persistent oil, meaning clean tankers, at $0.4337, unchanged.

Dry cargo vessels at $0.5751, down 5.0 percent.

Fully cellular container vessels at $1.0237, up 15.0 percent.

Passenger vessels at $3.1472, down 8.5 percent.

Two things stand out from the table. Container ships now pay nearly double the dry cargo rate on the same gross tonnage. And passenger vessels remain in a category of their own at more than three times the container rate, which reflects the crew and passenger liability exposure rather than anything about the hull.

What Did Not Change

The structure held steady, which is the reassuring half of the announcement.

The individual club retention remains at $10 million, meaning your club carries the first $10 million of any claim before anything else responds. The Pool retention sits at $90 million in excess of that, so claims up to $100 million are absorbed within the Group before the commercial reinsurance market is reached.

Hydra, the Group's Bermuda-based captive, continues to support the structure through risk retention. The Group will continue to pool any reinsurance shortfall, which means no change to the cover shipowners actually hold.

Excess war and terrorism risk cover is renewed for a further twelve months. The aggregated sub-limit for certain risks increased from $100 million in 2025/26 to $125 million for 2026/27, and cover for certain bio-chemical risks remains at $30 million per ship in the aggregate.

Why Containers Went Up When Everything Else Went Down

This is the part worth understanding, because it is not a story about reinsurance pricing generally.

The clubs described the year as a relatively benign Pool claims environment, which is why four of five categories received reductions. The container increase is not a market-wide hardening. It is a reallocation.

The UK P&I Club's circular put it directly, describing changes in cost allocations by ship type, principally an increase in container ship rates and a decrease for persistent oil, dry, and passenger ships. The Group's Reinsurance Committee reviews vessel categories each year and adjusts how the total cost of the programme is distributed across them.

So the total bill did not rise much. The share attributed to container ships did.

The underlying reason is severity rather than frequency. Container ship casualties produce very large single losses, and the fleet has been getting larger. A fire on a 15,000 TEU vessel generates salvage, wreck removal, cargo, and pollution exposure at a scale that reaches well into the Pool, and as we covered in our piece on the Allianz Safety and Shipping Review, fire incidents have been running at their second highest level in a decade, driven substantially by misdeclared cargo.

When a category produces the large losses that penetrate the Pool, the allocation follows.

What It Costs You

The arithmetic is straightforward and worth doing on your own fleet.

A 100,000 gross ton container ship carries a GXL charge of $102,370 for the year. The same vessel at the 2025/26 rate would have been around $89,000, so the increase is roughly $13,000 per ship.

A 100,000 gross ton dry cargo vessel pays $57,510. A persistent oil tanker of the same tonnage pays $57,580.

On a fleet of twenty container ships of that size, the category reallocation costs around $265,000 a year. That is not a crisis. It is also not nothing, and it is a cost that no amount of loss prevention or clean record will offset, because the rate is the same for everyone in the category.

The 2027 Picture

Looking forward, the signals are mixed in an unusual way.

Gallagher's analysis as of September 2026 estimates International Group free reserves at an all-time high, in the region of $6.8 billion. By any ordinary measure the clubs are in strong financial condition.

At the same time, the Group clubs collectively remain in underwriting deficit. Performance improved but the underlying business is still not breaking even on premium alone. Current-year Pool development has been described as relatively stable at mid-year.

Large-loss reinsurance pricing is reported to be facing renewed pressure, and Gallagher expects reinsurance rates to rise for 2027/28, with particular attention again on fully cellular container ships.

The 2027/28 GXL rates have not been announced and will be published around December, ahead of the 20 February renewal.

For a container operator, the planning assumption should be that the 15 percent increase is the start of a reallocation rather than a one-off correction. For dry cargo and tanker owners, the reductions this year came from the same reallocation and may not repeat.

What to Do at Renewal

Separate the two numbers before you negotiate. Ask your broker to show the club premium and the GXL charge as distinct lines. If you cannot see them separately, you cannot tell whether a quote improved because the club rated you better or because the category rate moved.

Do not spend negotiating effort on the GXL. It is published, it is fixed, and it applies equally to every entry in the category. The effort belongs on the club premium, where your record actually counts.

Check your category is correct. The persistent oil tanker rate carries a condition. Where a ship is entered on the basis that it carries persistent oil cargo and does not in fact carry such a cargo during the policy year, the entry basis is revisited. A vessel sitting in the wrong category is paying the wrong rate, and the difference between the clean tanker rate at $0.4337 and the container rate at $1.0237 is substantial.

Model your fleet against both rates. Multiply gross tonnage by the applicable rate for every entered vessel. It takes ten minutes and it tells you exactly what portion of your P&I cost is outside your control.

For container operators, factor the trend into budgets. If the reallocation continues into 2027/28 as Gallagher anticipates, a second increase on top of this one is the reasonable planning assumption.

Use loss prevention where it actually pays. The GXL rate will not move for you. The club premium will. Cargo screening, fire detection and suppression, and documented safety management are the areas where a container operator can affect the number that is negotiable, and they also address the exposure driving the category reallocation in the first place.

The Bottom Line

The International Group completed its 2026/27 reinsurance renewal with the structure intact, the retentions unchanged, and most vessel categories paying less than last year.

Container ships pay 15 percent more, not because reinsurance got more expensive but because the Group's allocation of cost by ship type moved against them, which is a consequence of the severity of the losses that category produces.

For the owner, the practical point is that P&I cost is two numbers rather than one. The published reinsurance rate is fixed and applies to everyone in your category. The club premium is where your record earns its value. Knowing which is which is the difference between a renewal conversation that achieves something and one that argues about a figure nobody at the club can change.