Civil Unrest Becomes a Top Political Risk Concern for Businesses

With businesses having ranked political risks and violence as a top 10 global risk for the past 3 years, civil unrest has now become businesses' top political violence concern, according to a new report from Allianz Commercial.

According to Allianz, 51 percent of businesses now rank civil unrest and riots as their top political risk and violence concern, reflecting the fact that such incidents are occurring more frequently and lasting longer.

In the report, Political Violence and Civil Unrest Trends 2025, Allianz noted that political violence can affect businesses in a number of ways including endangering the safety of employees, business interruption, and material damage to property and assets.

According to the report, since 2017 there have been more than 800 significant anti-government protests in more than 150 countries, including 160 in 2024 alone. Some 18 percent of those protests lasted longer than 3 months, Allianz said.

Following 2024's "super election year," policy changes by governments will trigger protests and flashpoints in many countries, Allianz said, as could economic hardships resulting from trade wars. In addition, an increase in the number of terrorist attacks by religious and political extremists—motivated by both far-right and far-left political ideologies—poses a major concern for businesses in the year ahead.

In response, companies need to adapt to volatile and uncertain geopolitical conditions to avoid negative surprises and mitigate risks, Allianz said.

Global businesses also face the risk of rogue state-sponsored sabotage, the Allianz report said. "Key infrastructure may often be the primary target, but the risk is actually much broader, with cyber tools enabling state proxies to conduct a wide range of sophisticated and deniable operations," the report said. "Meanwhile, the increasing frequency of plots and attacks from Islamist groups and inspired individuals, as well as growing empowerment among supporters of other far right and far left groups, are among the factors driving the increasingly complex global terrorism landscape."

With global stability continuing to be undermined in 2025 by such forces as international conflict, geopolitical upheaval, and economic uncertainty and the prospect of trade wars, businesses must remain vigilant to the shifting nature of political violence and mindful of the risk that localized unrest could have a significant impact on their activities, the Allianz report said.