Property Insurance

Country risk

Purpose

Country risk shows how risky each country you insure in is for political violence, war, expropriation and biological hazards, next to your sites and their insured value. It helps Insurance teams see where political and health risk meets large values, explain that exposure to insurers and brokers, and follow how it changes.

Country risk is under Insurance → Analytics → Country risk.

The 21RISK country risk score

Every country gets a score from 0 to 100, where higher means more risk. The score is the highest of four parts, each also scored 0 to 100:

  • Political violence: riots, strikes, civil commotion, terrorism and sabotage.
  • War: war, civil war, insurrection and armed conflict.
  • Expropriation: confiscation, nationalisation and other government action against property.
  • Biological hazards: epidemics and other biological hazards.

Scores fall in five bands. A country takes the band of its riskiest part:

  • Very low (0–14): no part shows more than normal risk: governments advise normal precautions, governance is strong, and there are no conflict deaths or outbreaks.
  • Low (15–34): some risk on at least one part, such as a government advising increased caution over unrest or terrorism, a few conflict deaths, somewhat weaker governance, or a health notice listing many countries.
  • Moderate (35–54): raised risk, such as advice against travel to some areas, 25 to 999 conflict deaths in a year, middling governance, or an outbreak in the country.
  • High (55–74): serious risk, such as a government advising to reconsider travel to the country, 1,000 or more conflict deaths in a year, or weak governance.
  • Very high (75–100): severe risk, such as a government advising against all travel to the country, or very weak governance.

Hover a band under the map to read this on the page.

What the score is based on

The score comes from public data only:

  • Travel advice from the U.S. Department of State, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the German Federal Foreign Office, and travel health notices from the U.S. CDC. Each government's advice is read onto one scale, from 1, normal precautions, to 4, avoid all travel, including higher levels for parts of a country.
  • World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators: political stability, rule of law and regulatory quality, with their five-year trend.
  • UCDP conflict data: deaths in armed conflict and violence against civilians over the last 12 months.
  • GDELT news-coded events: protests, riots, strikes and other unrest at three times or more a country's own normal.

How a country is scored

An AI model applies a fixed rubric to a country's facts and gives each part a score with its reasons. The reasons cite the facts by their ref, such as A1 for a government's advice, and code checks that every fact cited is one the model was given. Each country is scored five times and the middle score of each part is kept, so one unusual answer does not move it.

Facts are checked for changes every hour. A country is scored again only when the facts its score rests on change, such as a new advice level, a change in conflict deaths or a new kind of unrest. A government rewording its advice does not change the score.

What you can review

The tab shows the scores for the insurance period you pick, with that period's sites and insured values:

  • Four figures at the top: the riskiest country you have sites in, how much of your insured value is in high and very high risk countries, how many of your countries are flaring this week, and how many of their scores changed in the last 30 days. A country is flaring when the news reported three times its usual week of unrest or more over the latest 7 days, by the rule the score uses.
  • A map of the countries you have sites in, from green for very low to red for very high, with your sites as purple dots, nearby sites grouped into a numbered bubble as on the Overview map; click a bubble to zoom in on its sites. Every other country's score is in the countries table under All countries. Hover a country or a site for its score and the part that sets it, and click it to open the country.
  • Events on the map, switched on above it: Conflict shows UCDP's armed conflict and violence against civilians over the 12 months the score counts, sized by deaths; Unrest shows GDELT's news-coded protests, riots, strikes, property destruction and terrorism over the last 28 days, sized by events. Events are counted per area of about 55 km. Hover one for the place, what the events were and when the latest was; click it to list the events, each with its date, type and place, and for unrest the news article it was coded from. GDELT codes events from the news automatically, so places with more news coverage show more events, and some events are misplaced or misread: the articles say what really happened.
  • Insured value by country risk: how much of your insured value is in each band.
  • Pulse: the last 13 weeks of unrest the news reported, a row per country you have sites in and a dot per day. A day is grey while its unrest is usual for the country, light red at twice its usual day, and red at three times, the level the score counts as high. A day turns red only with at least 10 events, so a few news mentions in a quiet country stay grey. Flaring countries come first, then the riskiest; the first 10 show until you show all. Hover a dot for its numbers, and click a country to open it. The country section shows its whole year as a calendar.
  • A country section with the country's score, how it last changed, and per part the reasons and the facts behind them. Below that, each government's advice in force, summarised in our words with a link to the publisher's page, the score history, and your sites in the country.
  • A countries table with the score and its parts for every country you have sites in, or every scored country, with insured value. It can be exported to Excel.
  • Sources and disclaimer, with the credit each source asks for.

Access

Users need the Read COPE & Values Insurance permission to see Country risk, like the other Analytics tabs. Group owners have full access. The scores are the same for every organization; the sites and insured values are your own.

Good to know

  • The score is an indication from public sources, not insurance, security or travel advice. Follow the publishers' own advice before travelling.
  • The map shows the same sites as the Values page, placed by their address coordinates. A site without coordinates still counts in its country but has no dot, and a site without a country is not counted by country; the page says how many sites that applies to.
  • A country with sites but no data yet shows as not scored.
  • The pulse draws a country's usual day from the same days as the score, the year before the last four weeks, so a flare-up never raises its own usual. It knows the usual day once there are 56 such days of news; until then the days are shaded grey against the busiest day shown, and none is red. A hollow dot is a day without unrest data.
previous NatCat and climate
next Engineering reports