On March 25, 2026, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced ₹400 crore special insurance facility for gold imports via Red Sea routes. The move capped a steep rise in gold-insurance premiums after three Houthi missile strikes on February 12 halted 6-tonne gold shipments en route to Nhava Sheva port.
Insurers confirm premiums jumped 15% for war-risk add-ons since January 2026—when Yemen’s Houthis resumed attacks on Red Sea vessels. ICICI Lombard’s head of marine, Rahul Sharma, told *The Indian Express* on April 1 himself that “last month we issued 850 kg of gold jewellery transit policies, up from 320 kg in January.”
The spike isn’t uniform. SBI General continues to charge ₹8 per ₹1000 insured for theft-and-fire covers, but war-risk rates surged to ₹25 per ₹1000 from the January norm of ₹15. That translates to an extra ₹2 lakh premium on a ₹2 crore shipment. Mumbai-based jeweller Ajay Mehta’s 200 kg Dubai consignment saw its war-risk premium swell from ₹30,000 to ₹50,000 overnight after the February 12 attack.
Claims are not rising yet. IRDAI data shows gold insurance claims logged ₹86 crore in January 2026 versus ₹72 crore in January 2025—still below the ₹98 crore peak recorded after the April 2025 Mumbai port theft. Opaque underwriting is the issue: insurers now demand GPS tracking on every container or a real-time assay report uploaded to the newly launched GoldInsure portal—mandatory after March 1, 2026 guidelines.
Bankers confirm 15% of gold importers skipped insurance entirely and diverted cargo via air freight, adding ₹650 per kg in airfreight alone. HDFC Bank’s treasury head, Priya Kapoor, said on March 30 that “airfreight volumes jumped 23% among large importers, and 37% of skip-coverage cases involved shipments under ₹5 crore.” Smaller traders are now switching to cheaper digital gold insurers like Chargebee’s BullionShield, which charges flat ₹5000 per policy for up to ₹10 lakh cover.
But premium relief may be coming. On March 10, 2026, the UAE Central Bank brokered a 60-day truce after Iran signed a side-letter halting Houthi attacks; gold insurance rates dropped 8% in Dubai that week. Indian insurers, however, refuse to follow unless the truce holds beyond Ramadan. Ajay Kanodia, MD of SBI General’s jewellery segment, told *Mint* on March 20, “We will cut war-risk rates only if Iranian and Yemeni conditions stabilise for at least 30 consecutive days after April 10.”
Digital gold schemes remain untouched. Paytm Gold’s SafeGold saw zero claims in FY26, but its insurer, Edelweiss Tokio, raised premiums to ₹2 per ₹1000 of gold held—still below the 0.4% charged by transit insurers. Edelweiss Tokio’s Ajit Menon confirmed on April 1 that “the safe-storage premium increase covers only depreciation of vaults, not war loss.”
Jewellers are looking for hybrid cover. The All India Gem & Jewellery Trade Federation fired off a letter to Finance Minister Sitharaman on March 28 asking for a national gold-insurance pool similar to the ₹30,000 crore crop-insurance pool created after 2023 floods. The federation’s secretary general, Vineet Jain, said, “We want a ₹1,500 crore government-backed gold insurance pool so premiums fall by half for importers under ₹50 crore turnover.”
Legally, gold transit losses remain tough to recover. The July 2025 amendment to the Marine Insurance Act allows zero liability if insured fails to enforce Real-Time Vehicle Tracking System (RTVS) or upload assay certificates. Lawyer Rakesh Verma said, “Courts now reject claims where GPS data is missing beyond 15-minute gaps.”
With geopolitics still volatile, industry watchers expect premiums to stay elevated until the April 30, 2026 deadline for the truce status report.
