Howden Re has partnered with Synthetik Insurance Technologies to launch UNREST, an analytical model for strikes, riots and civil commotion risk. The platform is designed for insurers and reinsurers assessing SRCC exposure, accumulation and potential losses across property portfolios.
UNREST combines property-level analytics with dynamic event simulation. It generates localized loss scenarios intended to support underwriting, portfolio management and reinsurance decisions.
Users receive information on concentrations of insured assets and potential accumulation across individual events. The model also estimates how different SRCC scenarios could affect properties throughout an insurance portfolio.
Howden Re said insured losses from civil unrest have risen substantially in recent years amid greater geopolitical volatility. Analytical methods used for SRCC haven’t developed at the same pace, leaving insurers with limited tools for measuring these exposures at individual-property level.
SRCC differs from natural catastrophe risk because historical events don’t produce a consistent pattern for future losses. Political conditions and urban geography influence how unrest develops, while rapid social mobilization changes where events spread and how long they continue.
Traditional SRCC analysis often relies on broad geographic assumptions or aggregate historical losses. UNREST instead generates event routes and footprints before estimating potential property-level damage across affected locations.
The approach gives insurers a more detailed view of where exposure sits within a portfolio. Reinsurers also receive information on how separate insured properties might accumulate into a larger loss during the same civil unrest event.
Howden Re’s Marine, Energy & Terror team is working on further development of the model for insurance and reinsurance applications. One area focuses on existing market definitions used to determine when SRCC losses count as a single occurrence.
UNREST measures potential losses under different radius and hours clauses found in current occurrence wordings. Changes in those contractual definitions could materially alter the amount of loss grouped into one insured event.
Howden Re said UNREST is the first model designed to quantify existing market event definitions for SRCC. The analysis gives insurers and reinsurers an estimate of how different occurrence clauses change potential loss amounts.
SRCC has become an increasingly important consideration for insurers and reinsurers, but the tools available to assess the risk have struggled to keep pace with how these events actually unfold.
Andrew Foot, managing director at Howden Re
Andrew Foot said property-level analysis provides a more detailed view of exposure and accumulation than tools built around broader geographic assumptions.
Foot said combining Howden Re’s insurance market experience with Synthetik’s modeling technology gives clients more information for underwriting and portfolio decisions. The model also gives reinsurers a clearer estimate of potential losses attached to different SRCC structures.
Synthetik CEO Brian Watson said precise SRCC modeling has remained difficult because civil unrest doesn’t follow the recurring historical patterns seen across some other catastrophe perils.
Synthetik’s approach therefore models realistic event routes and physical footprints instead of depending solely on demographic or historical trends.
The result is a scenario-based framework for a peril whose location and severity change quickly once unrest begins. UNREST applies those simulated events against property-level exposure to estimate how losses could develop across an insurer’s or reinsurer’s portfolio.
