US Development Finance Corporation

The US Development Finance Corporation became a central but conspicuously ineffective actor in the Hormuz crisis. In March 2026, President Trump announced the DFC would backstop war-risk cover for maritime trade in the Gulf, pairing it with promised Navy escorts through the Strait — a combination last attempted during Operation Earnest Will in 1987 but never before with state insurance alongside. The $40 billion Chubb-backed reinsurance facility launched with ceremony, yet as of 25 June has recorded zero uptake: not one vessel has used it.

The DFC was established in 2019 under the BUILD Act as the successor to OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation), consolidating development-finance functions and raising the lending cap to $60 billion. It is a US government agency whose mission is mobilising private capital in developing economies and advancing US Foreign Policy goals. The Hormuz facility represents its largest-ever single commitment to conflict-zone risk insurance, but uptake has been blocked by an irreconcilable conflict: vessels seeking DFC cover must register with Iran's PGSA (Persian Gulf Strait Authority), which requires AIS transponder data the DFC's own OFAC compliance rules forbid London P&I clubs from providing.

The zero-uptake outcome matters because it exposed the limits of unilateral US financial statecraft in a multilateral maritime crisis. London underwriters halved Hormuz premiums by late June regardless — from a five per cent peak to roughly two per cent of vessel value — but did so on commercial grounds, not because the DFC programme made them whole. The reinsurance gap remains structurally open: P&I cover is still withdrawn across the Gulf, and the DFC's legal conflict with OFAC has not been resolved.