Political instability and violence rated fourth in the 2022 Insurance Risk Barometer, reflecting the enormous risk that businesses face in South Africa today.
This comes as the country marks the first anniversary of the deadly 2021 unrest that rocked the country leaving over 300 dead and billions of rand worth of damage to businesses and infrastructure.
Cybercrime, supply chain concerns, and infrastructure constraints came out as the top three risks, according to 135 local businesses. Political violence climbed by 10% since 2021, prior to the unrest.
The 2022 Barometer is Allianz’s 11th consecutive report. Allianz is global insurance and asset management firm.
Head of Property at the firm, Ronald Dodo-Tabaziva, says companies should review their insurance policies given the political landscape the country finds itself in.
“From an insurance side, we have recorded one of the largest single events in SA, up to the region of 20 billion. We saw quite a lot of losses that were actually submitted by clients, but not only that, I think from a business impact. What was very hard to accept was we saw a lot of businesses in KwaZulu-Natal impacted. So around 60 000 businesses had to actually close and we also saw the impact it had on the livelihoods of people where we saw 9000 people at risk of losing their jobs and we saw also the economy on a whole an estimated cost of between 50 to 70 billion.”
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