England riots (August 2011)

On August 4, 2011, Mark Duggan was shot dead by police in Tottenham. On the evening of the 6th, a protest outside the police station turned into arson, and within four nights the disorder reached Croydon, Ealing, Clapham, Enfield, then Birmingham, Manchester, Salford, Liverpool and Nottingham. Five people died. The Reeves furniture store in Croydon and Sony's distribution warehouse in Enfield burned on the night of August 8. For insurers, the loss came in two layers. First the property policy, where riot is standard cover in the UK: the ABI put the insured cost at more than £100 million in the first days, then at more than £200 million. Then recovery, under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886, against the Metropolitan Police and other forces: several thousand claims, filed within a deadline first set at fourteen days, which the Home Secretary extended to forty-two. Aggregation weighed on reinsurance. Catastrophe treaties define the event by an hours clause (often seventy-two for riot), and a wave spread across four nights and about ten cities raised the question of how many events had occurred. Business interruption led to the Mitsui Sumitomo litigation, which the insurer lost in the Supreme Court in 2016. One caveat: by global standards the loss is mid-sized, but it was enough to get the statute rewritten, through the Riot Compensation Act 2016.

• Riot (Damages) Act 1886, replaced by the Riot Compensation Act 2016