Insurance can play a critical role in supporting organisations during a crisis by helping absorb financial shocks, fund recovery efforts, and maintain operational continuity. The sections below outline how different types of insurance can respond in a crisis environment and the key considerations organisations should be aware of when assessing their coverage.
Operational risk and continuity
Insurance plays an important role in helping organisations maintain operational stability during a crisis by providing financial protection, easing cash flow challenges, mitigating periods of disruption, and supporting physical damage reinstatement efforts. This helps organisations stabilise operations, thereby protecting key stakeholder relationships, minimising periods of disruption, and preserving market positions. When physical or digital damage occurs, these policies can support the costs associated with restoring operations and maintaining service delivery.
In particular, business interruption cover can help protect revenue and cash flow following insured physical damage by supporting payroll, supplier payments, and other fixed costs while operations are restored. Insurance may also fund temporary facilities, expedited logistics, or alternative suppliers where required to maintain customer service during disruption.
However, many policies respond only where there is physical damage caused by an insured peril. This means that operational disruptions without property damage — such as supply chain delays, airspace closures, or workforce disruptions — may fall outside the scope of standard coverage.
During periods of geopolitical tension, insurers and reinsurers typically increase scrutiny of exposures such as political violence and war-related risks. Organisations should therefore expect closer underwriting reviews, potential capacity constraints for certain regions, and possible pricing adjustments at renewal as insurers reassess evolving risk conditions.
Property, business interruption and third-party liability
Standard property all risks insurance provides broad protection against physical damage to insured assets, but typically excludes losses arising from war, invasion, military action, or similar hostilities. These exclusions reflect the systemic nature of war-related risks and mean that damage caused directly by military activity — such as missile strikes or combat operations — would generally fall outside standard property coverage. Depending on the classification of an event, however, losses caused by terrorism, sabotage, or civil unrest may fall within political violence coverage instead.
Business interruption cover is normally triggered when insured property suffers physical damage caused by a covered peril. As a result, operational disruptions such as travel restrictions, airspace closures, port shutdowns, or supply chain delays typically do not trigger business interruption cover unless they result from insured physical damage. However, some policies may include extensions such as denial of access or prevention of access where nearby third-party damage restricts access to insured premises, but the underlying cause must still be an insured peril.
Third-party liability insurance continues to protect organisations against most claims arising from normal business activities, such as injury to visitors or damage to third-party property. However, these policies generally contain similar war exclusions, meaning that injuries or losses directly caused by war or military activity may not be covered. In some cases, liability cover for war-related incidents may be available as part of a broader political violence insurance program.
Political violence
Standalone political violence or terrorism insurance can provide cover for risks such as terrorism, sabotage, riots, strikes, civil commotion, malicious damage, insurrection, rebellion, coup d'etat, civil war and/or sovereign war, subject to policy wording and territorial limits. These policies generally cover physical damage to insured property and may also include resulting business interruption where operations are disrupted following damages from insured perils. Some programs also include extensions for events such as denial of access, ingress/egress restrictions, service interruption, or contingent business interruption affecting supply chains.
In the current environment, insurers may issue notices of cancellation or amend terms where permitted by contract. Monitoring these provisions is therefore important, particularly where organisations have assets or operations in higher-risk regions. Claims outcomes will depend heavily on how an incident is classified under the policy — for example, whether an event is considered terrorism, civil unrest, or war — since coverage is triggered only when insured property suffers physical damage from a named insured peril.
Organisations with exposures in higher-risk areas should review their political violence and terrorism coverage, paying particular attention to triggered extensions and claims notification requirements. In some jurisdictions, government compensation schemes may also apply following war-related damage to property within the territory.
Marine war and hull
For organisations operating vessels or shipping goods through regions impacted by conflict, marine war risk insurance provides cover for perils such as war, strikes, riots, and civil commotion affecting vessels, cargo, or maritime operations. Following recent geopolitical escalations, underwriters have begun issuing Notices of Cancellation (NOCs) on some war risk policies, particularly where vessels operate in defined high-risk waters such as parts of the Arabian/Persian Gulf and surrounding regions.
These cancellation notices typically apply specifically to war-related perils and may take effect within a short timeframe — often 48 hours or seven days, depending on the policy wording. Once issued, coverage for these perils may cease until reinstated, and reinstatement will normally require confirmation of revised terms from the insured. Importantly, cover does not automatically resume once the notice period expires unless new terms are agreed.
Despite market commentary suggesting there is reduced appetite for war exposures in certain regions, capacity may still be available through specialist marine war markets and facilities. Organisations with maritime operations in affected areas should therefore monitor policy notifications closely and consider reinstatement options where required to maintain protection for vessels and cargo transiting higher-risk waters.
Cyber
Periods of geopolitical tension often extend beyond physical conflict into the cyber domain. Heightened instability can lead to increased cyber activity by state-aligned groups or opportunistic actors targeting organisations connected to the affected region. As a result, organisations may face elevated exposure to cyber incidents such as denial-of-service attacks, attempted network intrusions, or disruption to digital supply chains.
Cyber insurance can respond to many malicious cyber events, including data breaches, ransomware incidents, and network disruptions. However, most policies contain exclusions relating to war or state-sponsored cyber operations, particularly where an attack has a significant impact on the functioning of a state. These exclusions reflect the systemic nature of large-scale cyber conflict, which could otherwise generate losses beyond the capacity of the insurance market.
In practice, attribution of cyber incidents is often uncertain, and insurers typically bear the burden of demonstrating that a war or state-sponsored exclusion applies. For this reason, organisations should notify insurers promptly following any cyber incident, even where the identity of the threat actor is unclear. Prompt notification helps preserve coverage and allows insurers to support incident response, forensic investigation, and business recovery.
