UNREST: bringing sharper insight to a changing SRCC risk landscape

As civil unrest becomes a more material source of insured loss, Howden Re’s Phoebe Clark discusses why insurers and reinsurers need a more granular way to understand Strikes, Riots and Civil Commotion risk — and how UNREST, a first of its kind tool leveraging state of the art modelling technology, is an innovation that will help clients move from broad assumptions to actionable portfolio insight.

Once treated as a peripheral extension to wider property or political violence cover, strikes, riots and civil commotion (SRCC) has become a meaningful source of accumulation risk for insurers and reinsurers. That shift is unfolding as the wider reinsurance market softens, even as the external risk environment becomes less settled. Against that backdrop, clients are asking not just what cover costs today, but whether their portfolios are resilient enough for the next period of volatility.

In response, Howden Re has launched UNREST (Understanding Networked Risk, Exposure and Scenario Trends), a unique global analytics capability that combines state of the art property-level analytics and modelling technology with realistic event simulation specifically adapted to help insurers and reinsurers better understand, quantify and manage SRCC risk.  Unlike existing offerings which tend to apply natural catastrophe frameworks to an SRCC problem, it is the first tool set up and built to precisely reflect and address the unique nature of risks in this space. Developed by Howden Re and powered by Synthetik’s technology, UNREST is an innovation designed to give clients a clearer view of where exposure is concentrated, how events could unfold and what they could mean for underwriting, portfolio management and reinsurance purchasing decisions.

Q&A with Phoebe Clark, Director, Marine, Energy & Political Violence, Howden Re

How would you describe the current SRCC market?

SRCC has moved from an ancillary concern to a capital and portfolio management issue. Political violence and civil unrest are no longer peripheral risks; they are increasingly central to how capital is deployed, portfolios are structured and exposure is assessed. The market is softening, but that should not be mistaken for a less risky world.

The problem is that SRCC does not behave like a natural catastrophe peril. It is political, social, economic and geographic all at once. Two events can look similar at the point of ignition and produce very different losses depending on where they happen, how quickly they spread and which assets sit in the path of escalation.

Why is now the right moment for a capability like UNREST?

Because now is when resilience can still be built on relatively favourable terms, which is the central point of Howden Re’s ‘Breaking the glass’ report: optionality is most readily secured when it is least urgently required. For SRCC, that means using today’s market conditions to understand accumulation, test contract response and build a better view of where volatility could emerge before losses force the issue.

UNREST was built to answer those practical questions. It is Howden Re innovation in action, state of the art technology and know-how to enable clients to address a fast-changing emerging risk class.  It simulates realistic civil unrest scenarios, tests concentrations of exposure, assess possible loss outcomes and understands how contract terms, including radii and hour clauses, could change the recoverable loss. In a market where pricing can move faster than risk perception, that level of visibility matters.

The best time to understand SRCC exposure is not after an event has revealed it. It is before the market turns, while clients still have choice, capacity and time to act.

SRCC is often discussed as a property issue. Is that too narrow?

Yes. Property damage is often the most visible part of an SRCC loss, but the implications can extend well beyond property. Civil unrest can affect terrorism and political violence programmes, marine and cargo exposures, event cancellation, business interruption, trade and supply chain risk, credit, casualty and broader specialty portfolios. It can also create questions about aggregation where clients have exposures spread across multiple lines but concentrated in the same city, transport corridor, retail district or critical infrastructure zone.

That cross-class impact is why SRCC needs a different analytical lens that breaks new ground rather than trying to reverse engineer existing approaches and old technologies into this challenging space. If clients look at the peril only through one line of business, they may miss how losses can transmit across a portfolio. UNREST focuses on the event footprint, the assets exposed and the pathways to loss, helping clients see the risk as an accumulation issue rather than a coverage footnote.

What makes UNREST different from existing approaches?

UNREST is purpose-built for SRCC and, to our knowledge, there is nothing else like it currently available in the market. It does not retrofit a natural catastrophe framework to a political violence problem. It models how civil unrest could realistically develop and spread at property level, because SRCC losses are intensely local: a route, a gathering point, a transport hub or a concentration of high-value commercial assets can change the loss picture materially.

It is also the first model capable of quantifying existing market event definitions for SRCC, which is a meaningful step forward for a class where clients have historically had limited analytical support. In practice, UNREST enables clients to see how different radii and hour clauses could change the loss quantum, rather than discovering the impact only after a claim. 

How does the partnership with Synthetik fit into the proposition?

Synthetik provides the next generation modelling technology behind UNREST. Howden Re brings the market, placement and client advisory expertise needed to apply that technology to real reinsurance and insurance decisions. The combination is important because clients do not need analytics in isolation; they need insight that helps them make better decisions about risk selection, aggregation and reinsurance strategy.

The model is also being enhanced with specific reinsurance considerations in mind. That means the capability is not static. We are using our market experience to focus development on the questions clients and reinsurers are actually asking, including how to identify credible accumulation scenarios, how to compare event definitions and how to translate model output into practical underwriting and placement decisions.

What can recent major SRCC losses teach the market?

Recent years have shown that SRCC can create very large losses, often from events that escalate quickly and do not follow a neat historical pattern. Howden Re analysis has estimated that insured losses related to SRCC rose from negligible levels in 2013 to more than US$8 billion between 2020 and 2024. Losses in markets such as Chile, South Africa, France, the United States and New Caledonia show how civil unrest can move rapidly from local disruption to a material insured loss event.

If UNREST had been available before some of those events, clients would have had a more realistic way to test how losses could build. They could have identified concentrations around vulnerable assets, assessed how unrest might spread through an urban environment and modelled how different event footprints and occurrence definitions could affect recoveries. Uncertainty does not disappear, but clients can make better decisions before it turns into loss.

What should clients be doing now?

Clients should be asking whether they have a clear enough view of their SRCC exposure across the whole portfolio. They should also be wary of approaches that have not been specifically built and adapted to reflect the unique nature of this fast-evolving class of risk.  Put simply, a riot is not a hurricane, it has a broader portfolio reach and is geographically more focused. As an industry we need to apply new thinking and new technologies to addressing these risks. That means looking beyond whether the peril is included in the policy and focusing on where exposures are concentrated, how losses could aggregate, whether the reinsurance structure is aligned with the risk and whether contract wording reflects the way events may actually unfold. Clarity of cover matters, but knowing exactly where the exposure sits matters just as much.

UNREST gives clients the ability to see that risk more clearly, and to use that insight to build resilience before it is tested.