Matt Harris, global head of partnerships and distribution, Synthetik Insurance Technologies highlights the threats in the year ahead.

Corporate boardrooms around the world are increasingly focused on the escalating risks of political violence and terrorism, driven by a surge in civil unrest and the growing duration and intensity of such incidents.

According to global insurer Allianz, more than 800 major anti-government protests have taken place across over 150 countries since 2017. Notably, 18% of these protests lasted longer than three months—pointing to a sustained and systemic pattern of disruption. The aftermath of the 2024 election year and ongoing economic instability, including tariff disputes, are expected to trigger further unrest in 2026.

Businesses are voicing heightened concern over the rise in terrorist attacks from both religious and political extremists across the ideological spectrum. This rising threat level has led to a sharp increase in demand for political violence and terrorism insurance coverage as organisations seek to protect themselves against an increasingly complex and volatile risk environment.

Property insurance exposure to terrorism is a complex issue where standard property policies may not cover terrorism-related damage, often leading to exclusions. To address this, most property insurers offer terrorism coverage as an endorsement or a separate policy, and many governments have established terrorism pools to share the risk with private insurers and provide a national backstop.

Social media reach and the misuse of artificial intelligence have emerged as top concerns for insurers that go beyond physical disruption. AI-enabled radicalisation, where sophisticated algorithms amplify extremist messaging and accelerate recruitment, is fast becoming a key driver of risk. This potential for cyber enhanced political violence, where technology is weaponised by extremist groups to extend their reach and impact, represents an increasing threat that is difficult to quantify.

Against this background, insurers and brokers are looking to technological developments more than ever to facilitate better understanding of the risk, how it is evolving and how to cover it. The critical focus is on to revolutionising insurance peril modelling through AI-driven automation, advanced physical simulations and behaviour-based analytics. Risk assessment, catastrophe modelling and exposure quantification are all areas that can benefit from next-generation tools that could only have been dreamed of five to ten years ago. As AI and automation reshape the insurance landscape, underwriters are under pressure to deliver faster, more accurate and efficient decision-making, which is where detailed modelling becomes critical.

When underwriters are considering Strikes, Riots, and Civil Commotion (SRCC) targets around the globe, they require tools that analyse potential realistic SRCC events and calculate property damage resulting from these simulations. Following Lloyd’s 2025 SRCC Extreme Disaster Scenario, reactive modelling examined both planned demonstrations and spontaneous unrest in the United States using dynamic heat-map analysis, while other models evaluate detailed civil unrest scenarios for the UK as the risk of widespread protests turning into an SRCC event continues to cause concern.

These measures include analysing specific property-level exposures to estimate potential damage. For more scattered disturbances in suburbs, retail parks, or logistics zones, it is possible to identify assets at heightened risk of disruption or opportunistic damage. This analysis can then lead to a spectrum of loss estimates, forecasting how severe a situation might become, and maps where risk may spread next.

The geopolitical landscape has become more volatile than at any time in recent memory. The political violence and terrorism insurance market must closely monitor both immediate and long-term implications of these risks to ensure clients are adequately protected. Policy wording, exclusions, pricing strategies and crisis response services must all evolve to reflect the reality on the ground. As the threat landscape becomes more complex, assureds will increasingly expect coverage to respond seamlessly, and insurers must be ready to meet that demand with insight, precision and resilience.