With five $1b+ insured loss events in the past five years – Chile (2019), US (2020), South Africa (2021), France (2023), and New Caledonia (2024) – the threat of strikes, riots and civil commotion (SRCC) is a growing concern for the insurance industry.

According to our SRCC Predictive Model, which provides a global assessment of the expected severity of damaging unrest in the next 12 months, the risk in the United States is about the same level as it was in early 2020, just prior to the historically large riots in May and June that year. And on the horizon is what could be a major spark of future unrest – the US Presidential election.

In this whitepaper, we explore how SRCC risks in the United States could manifest over the coming months. To do this, we’ve used two proprietary tools that we developed for assessing this hazard: the SRCC Predictive Model and the SRCC Catastrophe Model, which shows that the $3b insured losses caused by the 2020 riots may not be an outlier.

Measuring and anticipating these risks is not just of importance to political violence underwriters but the wider insurance industry as a whole.