Reinsurance Strategy
Complex multi-party engagements where risk, regulation, and claim resolution require coordinated action.
This interactive experience is the shipped product itself — the same application code customers run in production, mounted read-only in your browser over a real sample journey. Not a video, not a mockup: because the demo and the product are one codebase, it can never drift from the real thing.
Inside this journey
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Qualification
Confirm budget range, decision-makers, procurement constraints, and timeline before committing to a full diagnostic and placement process.
Qualification Questions
Program Type and Strategic Fit
- Which reinsurance program types are you considering for this opportunity?
- Roughly how would you describe the scale and complexity of the portfolio this program would cover?
Budget and Commercial Readiness
- Do you have an allocated budget or target premium range for reinsurance placement and advisory fees?
- If comfortable, please indicate an approximate annual premium or fee range for this program (or leave blank to discuss in the meeting).
Decision Authority and Procurement Constraints
- Who needs to approve a reinsurance placement and advisory engagement?
- Are there procurement rules, vendor onboarding steps, or internal approvals that could affect whether or how we engage?
- Are there minimum reinsurer credit ratings, concentration limits, or counterparty restrictions that will shape acceptable panel options?
Timing and Compliance Triggers
- What is your ideal placement timeline or firm deadline (for example, upcoming renewal, board window, or regulatory filing)?
- Are there regulatory, rating agency, or data residency requirements we should account for up front?
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Outcome Discovery
Map exposures, current reinsurance arrangements, capital objectives, rating agency and regulatory constraints, and measurable success criteria.
Discovery Questions
Opening snapshot: exposures and recent program
- To start, how would you summarize the lines of business and perils that define your reinsurance program?
- How many legal entities, underwriting units, or segmented portfolios are included in your program?
- Tell me about your current treaty coverages and facultative practices across property catastrophe, casualty excess, aggregate stop-loss, and specialty lines.
- Walk me through the typical attachment points, limits, and layer stacking you buy for your largest perils.
- When was the last time your program structure changed materially and what triggered that change?
- If a single exposure or contract term made this program untenable, what would it be and why?
Where program gaps immediately threaten capital or ratings
- Name the single reinsurance gap most likely to trigger a strong reaction from your CFO or a rating agency.
- Quantify the capital strain or earnings volatility you attribute to the current structure, using ranges or scenarios if that helps.
- Point to the treaty features or reinsurer concentrations that create the largest counterparty credit or collateral risk for you.
- Who on your leadership team is most likely to push back on material changes to reinsurance strategy, and why?
- If a rating agency or regulator demanded a near-term remediation, could you present an alternative within your board approval timeline?
Operational frictions that slow placements and recoveries
- What recurring claims or notification failures have cost your team time, recoveries, or credibility over the last two years?
- Give a recent example of a claim where your recovery was delayed or disputed, and describe the root cause.
- How would you rate the readiness of your claims and exposure files for market placement?
- How often do model version mismatches or exposure reconciliation issues create pricing or settlement gaps for your team?
- What single operational failure would cause you to pause or withdraw from a market approach this renewal?
Alternatives you are actively weighing right now
- Describe the external and internal alternatives you are actively considering instead of engaging an outside placement advisor.
- Select the options you have evaluated or are evaluating for this renewal.
- What specific conditions would have to be true about your current approach for you to keep it rather than change?
- Has anyone on your team proposed solving placement, analytics, or modeling internally, and if so what resource commitment was suggested?
- What would be the single decisive reason you would not switch vendors this renewal?
What your board and executives will insist on
- List the three metrics your board would require to be preserved or improved before approving a program change.
- Who must sign off at the executive level and what committee timelines govern your final approval?
- Select the internal approvers who must sign the final placement.
- If the CFO rejects the pricing scenario needed to achieve your capital target, what fallback decision path would you follow?
- Could your board approve an out-of-cycle change if a clear solvency or capital benefit was demonstrated this quarter?
Execution readiness and gating constraints
- Identify the documents, systems, or approvals your team must deliver before we can begin the market approach.
- How many exposure files and in what formats will you need to provide for a full program analysis?
- Are APIs or secure data transfer endpoints available for your exposure, policy, and claims systems, and who controls access?
- Who will be the day-to-day data and project contact on your side?
- Do you foresee any regulatory filings, legal reviews, or internal audits that could delay placement and by how long?
- If the data or approvals are not available within the placement window, will you pause, delay, or proceed with limited scope?
What success looks like and who owns it
- What measurable improvement in your capital position, earnings volatility, or ceded loss ratio would make leadership sign the agreement this cycle?
- Which timeframe do you expect to see measurable benefit for your balance sheet or earnings?
- Name the leader who will own the post-placement review and ongoing performance tracking for your program.
- How will you validate success, through capital model uplift, rating agency feedback, or actuarial loss experience, and who will sign off?
- If a pilot placement or recommendation misses the target, what contractual or governance remedy would you expect to see to continue the relationship?
Timing: what accelerates or stops this deal
- If you could lock an ideal timeline today, what are the immovable dates that govern this renewal for your organization?
- Describe the internal approval steps that usually take the most time for your team and estimate their duration in business days.
- How ready is your organization to engage now?
- If we delivered an agreed scope and pricing within 30 days, could you complete approvals and sign within your stated timelines?
- What single barrier would cause you to stop this process entirely before placement?
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Stakeholder Alignment Meetings
Document sessions with the CRO, chief actuary, CFO, and board representatives to confirm objectives, approval gates, and decision timelines.
Meeting Notes
- Assumptions and Approval Gate Framework
- Financial Objectives and Capital Constraint Ratification
- Actuarial and Modeling Sign-Off
- Program Design Approval Aligned with Risk Appetite
- Board Approval Package and Final Decision Calendar
- Document the selected program specifications and the enumerated tradeoffs for stakeholder review.
- Publish a model governance note describing versioning, assumptions, and known limitations.
- Recap objectives, constraints, and model outputs
- Preferred program design selected and documented with explicit tradeoffs noted.
- Any required modifications are itemized with clear acceptance criteria for re-evaluation.
- Placement readiness metrics established to trigger the market approach.
- Confirm engagement assumption and scope
- Prepare a placement-ready package template including pricing targets, required model outputs, and counterparty criteria.
- List any remaining open technical questions that block selection and schedule targeted working sessions to resolve them.
- Define required board artifacts and package contents
- Board package contents and supporting appendices agreed and versioned for production.
- Board decision dates and briefing schedule fixed in the decision calendar.
- Communication and escalation protocol documented and ready to use if issues emerge.
- Assemble the board deck and appendices and circulate the draft for executive review by the nominated deadline.
- Publish the final decision calendar with briefing dates and approval gates in the shared workspace.
- Document and publish the escalation protocol and the conditions that trigger each escalation step.
- A documented decision rights matrix showing who approves each gate and the approval thresholds.
- An approval gate list with required artifacts and acceptance criteria for each gate.
- A preliminary decision timeline with critical path dates and contingency options agreed.
- Produce and circulate the decision rights matrix in the platform workspace.
- Draft the approval gate checklist with artifact templates for each gate.
- Publish the preliminary decision timeline and flag critical dependencies for monitoring.
- Recap decision framework outputs from prior session
- Budget range and acceptable cost-to-transfer metrics confirmed for use in program design.
- Capital relief and rating/regulatory constraints documented and accepted.
- A short list of measurable success criteria that will be tracked post-placement.
- Finalize the financial objective document including budget range and cost tolerances.
- Compile and attach regulatory and rating agency constraint evidence for design validation.
- Publish the agreed success criteria and the method for measuring them in the shared workspace.
- Review proposed modeling approach and model versions
- Modeling approach, scenario set, and output metrics signed off and frozen for runs.
- Exposure data quality and acceptable tolerances confirmed and logged.
- Model run schedule with version control and review steps agreed.
- Deliver the cleaned exposure file in the agreed format to the modeling team.
- Execute the agreed base and stress model runs and deliver preliminary loss distributions by the scheduled date.
- Map decision roles and thresholds
- Present 2 to 3 program design options with tradeoffs
- Set the board briefing and approval timeline
- Validate exposure and loss input data
- Present proposed budget range and cost tolerances
- Decision discussion and selection or modification list
- Agree scenario set and output metrics
- Agree communication protocol and escalation triggers
- Define approval gates and required artifacts
- Confirm capital and rating constraints
- Agree preliminary timeline and contingency paths
- Confirm post-approval handoffs and immediate next steps
- Ratify measurable success criteria
- Confirm run schedule and model governance
- Confirm placement readiness metrics
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Solution Experience
Walk through program design scenarios, modeled loss distributions, and capital/earnings impacts using the buyer's data and realistic market outcomes.
Solution Experience
- Program Design & Capital Impact Walkthrough
- Confirm the current state and its cost
- You confirm the demonstrated scenarios remove the disagreement caused by fragmented analyses and produce committee-ready quantitative tradeoffs.
- Run the agreed final scenario set using the confirmed exposure file and deliver a comparative results package with modeled loss distributions, capital impact, and recommended reinsurance structure before the follow-up session.
- You accept specific numeric acceptance criteria for placement success, including target capital relief and acceptable counterparty concentration limits.
- Review inputs and assumptions
- Provide the final exposure file in the agreed model format and confirm the model version and any excluded covers.
- Walk through Program Scenario A, conservative structure
- Provide the decision authority matrix and the placement window dates for the upcoming renewal.
- You agree on the data, model version, and deliverables required to proceed to mutual commit and market approach.
- Walk through Program Scenario B, capital-efficient structure
- Confirm target numeric acceptance criteria for capital relief and acceptable earnings volatility to be used in the recommendation.
- Market outcome sensitivity and capacity check
- Validate the future state
- Agree next evidence and decision criteria
- Solution Experience Session
- Solution Experience Deck
- Solution Brief — Program Design Scenarios
- meeting
- slides
- document
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Solution Scope
Define program components (treaty/facultative layers), modeling and actuarial deliverables, reinsurer panel criteria, placement services, and ongoing management responsibilities.
Scope Configuration
- Catastrophe Modeling and PML Deliverables
- Actuarial Loss Projections and Loss Curves
- Reinsurance Program Structure Optimization
- Run Capital Efficiency and Rating-Agency Impact Models
- Reinsurer Panel Selection and Credit Dossiers
- Negotiate Treaty and Facultative Placements
- Draft and Finalize Reinsurance Contract Wording
- Execute Annual Renewal Placement
- Event Loss Estimation and Reinsurer Notification
- Manage Reinsurance Claims Advocacy and Recoveries
- Regulatory Capital Filing Support for Reinsurance
- M&A Reinsurance Due Diligence Package
Scope Questions
Catastrophe Modeling and PML Deliverables
- Which catastrophe model vendor and release should be used for PML outputs and loss exceedance curves (specify model family and release year)?
- How many locations and exposure tiers are represented in your exposure file (provide counts by location, TIV band, or portfolio)?
- Provide the format and field-mapping notes for the exposure file you will deliver for modeling (for example cedant Excel template, CSV bordereau with fields: location_id, address, TIV, construction).
- Specify which PML metrics you require in the deliverable (for example 1-in-100 PML, 1-in-250 PML, average annual loss, loss exceedance curve, vulnerability curve).
- What acceptance criteria will confirm the PML deliverable is complete and ready for placement (for example reconciled gross exposure within a percentage threshold, inclusion of specified return periods, and a model run report)?
Actuarial Loss Projections and Loss Curves
- Who in your actuarial function will be the primary data owner for ceded and gross claims triangles and loss development factors (role or contact)?
- Identify the claims period and coverage boundaries we should model (accident year vs underwriting year, occurrence vs claims-made, policy limits and coverage attachments).
- Confirm whether you require stochastic loss distributions and percentile loss curves at treaty layer level, portfolio aggregate level, or both.
- Indicate which actuarial outputs you expect: mean AAL by layer, P50/P75/P90 percentiles by attachment, reserve development scenarios, or fitted loss distribution parameters.
- Estimate the acceptance thresholds for actuarial projections that you will use to sign off on the deliverable (for example allowable variance vs. cedant-reported AAL, required reconciliation steps, or confidence interval coverage).
Reinsurance Program Structure Optimization
- Select which lines of business and perils to include in the optimization (for example US property catastrophe, international property cat, casualty excess, aggregate stop-loss, specialty lines).
- Attach or list current treaty attachments, limits, reinstatement terms, and facultative triggers we should consider when optimizing structure.
- Upload a redacted declarations page or sample policy form that shows per-location limits, per-occurrence limits, and any major endorsements impacting reinsurance design.
- Describe capital or earnings objectives for the optimized program (for example target reduction in volatility of net income, target return on reinsurance spend, or target reduction in regulatory capital).
- Outline structural constraints we must respect during optimization such as maximum single-reinsurer share, quota share vs excess preference, or limits on reinstatement costs.
Run Capital Efficiency and Rating-Agency Impact Models
- List the regulatory and rating frameworks to evaluate for capital impact (for example NAIC risk-based capital, Solvency II standard formula, rating agency capital model).
- Choose whether you need deterministic capital impact reporting only or probabilistic testing tied to your internal capital model.
- State the rating agency or regulator metrics you want included in the output (for example statutory surplus change, required capital at X% confidence, or rating-grade sensitivity).
- Are there scheduled rating agency presentations or regulatory filing deadlines we must align the capital runs to?
- When relative to renewal do you need the capital and rating-impact deliverables (for example number of weeks before market approach or rating-agency meeting)?
Reinsurer Panel Selection and Credit Dossiers
- Where should concentration limits be applied for reinsurer selection (by country of domicile, region, or group parent)?
- Do you require external credit dossiers and third-party ratings summarized for each reinsurer or an internal counterparty scorecard?
- Will you accept capacity from reinsurers with unsecured letter of credit arrangements or do you require collateralized structures for certain jurisdictions/limits?
- Which format do you prefer for credit dossiers and counterparty summaries (PDF dossier, spreadsheet scorecard, or slide deck)?
- Which stress return period should we model for concentration analysis when selecting the panel (for example aggregate 1-in-200 or 1-in-250 event on a share basis)?
Negotiate Treaty and Facultative Placements
- Which attachment points and limit layers are negotiable versus fixed for placement (list specific treaty attachment points and limits by line)?
- Which placement support materials will you provide: completed placement slips, facultative sample slips, broker submission deck, and signed letter of authorization (LOA)?
- What frequency of status updates do you expect during active market negotiations (daily, twice-weekly, weekly)?
- How will premium allocation, ceding commission, and profit commission schedules be documented for negotiation (example schedules, calculation templates, or contract clauses)?
- Which governance approvals are required to bind placements and what are their approval thresholds (for example underwriting authority limits, CFO sign-off, board approval thresholds)?
Draft and Finalize Reinsurance Contract Wording
- Which reinsurance contract template should be used as baseline for drafting (treaty slip wording, facultative slip wording, bespoke wording, or hybrid)?
- How many bespoke clauses do you anticipate needing (for example terrorism carve-outs, accounting clauses, arbitration venue clauses)?
- Provide any existing clause language or prior treaty wording you want preserved or changed; upload redacted clauses if available.
- Specify jurisdiction of law preferences for contracts and any local regulatory clauses required (for example local admission, tax withholding language, or regulatory reporting obligations).
- What evidence will validate finalized contract wording and permit signature (define required sign-off owners, reconciled slip vs contract, and final executed LOA)?
- Define any out-of-scope deliverables for this engagement (for example ongoing claims handling, systems implementation, or litigation services) and specify what responsibilities remain with you versus us.
Execute Annual Renewal Placement
- Who should receive renewal placement updates and comparative pricing decks (list roles or distribution list)?
- Identify renewal priorities for this year: price reduction, capacity increase, improved terms, or program continuity.
- Confirm the renewal placement window and any blackout dates when binding cannot occur.
- Indicate whether you want peer program benchmarking and market analytics included in the renewal package.
- Estimate the acceptable premium change band year-over-year that would not trigger a re-structure conversation (for example +/- X%).
Event Loss Estimation and Reinsurer Notification
- Select the event scenarios you require for event loss estimation (single event, aggregate events across treaties, or industry model consensus scenario).
- Attach your most recent claims bordereau, paid/unpaid loss extracts, and exposure updates that we should reconcile to modeled event losses.
- Upload insurer preliminary loss estimates or catastrophe exposure updates after the event, including file format and timestamp required.
- Describe your notification thresholds and timing for reinsurer alerts (for example notify when estimated loss exceeds attachment, or when estimated recoverable exceeds a set percentage).
- Outline the required contents of reinsurer notification letters including estimated loss, affected treaties and attachments, and requested preliminary recoverable amount.
Manage Reinsurance Claims Advocacy and Recoveries
- List the claim scenarios where you expect active claims advocacy support (for example coverage disputes, overlapping treaty recoveries, or large complex losses).
- Choose your preferred documentation format for claims submissions to reinsurers (claims schedule, loss run plus legal memorandum, or full claim file).
- State the expected SLAs for claim submission support and reinsurer follow-up communications.
- Are there historical disputes, precedent treaty wordings, or arbitration outcomes we should reference when advocating on recoveries?
- When do you expect recoveries to be reconciled against ceded accounts (quarterly, semi-annual, annual, or at claim close)?
Regulatory Capital Filing Support for Reinsurance
- Where will the regulatory capital filings be submitted (list jurisdictions and regulator templates that apply)?
- Do you require a reinsurance risk transfer legal or accounting opinion to be included in the filing package?
- Will you provide statutory financials and supporting schedules required for regulator submission (for example ceded premium schedules, reinsurance ledger)?
- Which file formats and signing standards are required for regulatory exhibits (for example signed PDF, XML submission, spreadsheet templates)?
- Which confidence level or return period should capital impacts be reported at for regulator review (for example 1-in-200 or 1-in-250)?
M&A Reinsurance Due Diligence Package
- Which books of business, treaty IDs or portfolios are in-scope for M&A diligence and what are the dominant attachment points by portfolio?
- Which datasets should be included in the diligence package: exposure files, claims triangles, historical bordereau, contract repository, and model runs?
- What cadence of interim diligence updates do you require during the M&A window (daily, twice-weekly, weekly)?
- How will sensitive diligence materials be shared and governed (secure data room, NDA, watermarked reports, or other controls)?
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Mutual Commit
Finalize commercial and contractual terms, fee structure, data-sharing permissions, governance, and acceptance criteria for placement and advisory services.
Agreement Modules
- Master Services Agreement (MSA)
- Statement of Work (SOW)
- Commercial Terms & Fee Schedule
- Broker Appointment & Agency Authorization
- Data Processing & Sharing Agreement (DPA)
- Acceptance Criteria & Deliverables Sign‑off
- Regulatory & Rating Agency Compliance Addendum
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Placement & Onboarding
Lock readiness facts and execute market placement with clear owners, sequencing, and regulatory checks.
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Pre-Placement Readiness
Capture concrete readiness facts — exposure files, model versions, authority matrices, placement windows, and regulatory prerequisites — needed before market approach.
Pre-Placement Questions
Environment and access
- Are the technical access paths the seller will need available for market work (policy admin, exposure repository, modeled outputs) — i.e., service accounts or agreed file-transfer method are in place?
- Are the buyer's exposure and inventory files finalized and approved for market distribution (so we can include them in reinsurer questionnaires)?
Data and configuration
- Has the primary catastrophe model version and exposure schema to be used for pricing been confirmed between the buyer and seller?
- Are final modeled loss runs (by layer/occurrence and aggregate) and policy-level attribution available for placement (not just high-level summaries)?
People and ownership
- Who is the buyer's primary point of contact for placement execution? (name, role, best email/phone — used to schedule market activity and approvals)
- Is an up-to-date authority and signatory matrix documented for placement and contract execution (who can sign, approval thresholds, board/committee gates)?
Timing, approvals and constraints
- What is the targeted placement window (market start date and latest acceptable close date)? Please give dates so we can schedule market rounds and broker resources.
- Are there regulatory, rating-agency, board or statutory filing dates, or blackout windows that must be met or avoided during placement?
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Placement Execution
Coordinate the market approach, negotiate pricing and terms with reinsurers, secure capacity, and manage contractual documentation and counterparty credit checks.
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Success
Conduct annual program reviews and renewals, manage mid-year catastrophe response and claims advocacy, and track issues and enhancement requests in a shared channel.
Success Reviews
- Go-live Health Check (weeks 1-4)
- First Measurement Review (weeks 4-10)
- 90-Day Acceptance Gate
- Quarterly Program Review
- Event Response and Claims Advocacy Drill (recurring or ad-hoc after material events)
Issues & Enhancements
- Update the enhancement backlog with prioritized items and target quarter for delivery.
- Produce a documented acceptance decision tied to the acceptance criteria recorded in Outcome Discovery, with pass/fail recorded per criterion.
- If applicable, create a remediation plan with verification steps and a follow-up date for any conditional items.
- Publish the signed acceptance record or documented decision note, including pass/fail status for each criterion.
- If conditional, deliver the remediation plan with verification steps and dates for follow-up validation.
- Update the shared issue and enhancement channel with any open items carried forward post-acceptance.
- Program performance versus targets
- Confirm whether net loss deviation and reinsurer concentration remain within acceptable bounds per Outcome Discovery targets, or document remediation required.
- Ensure all active recoveries and disputed claims have named follow-up actions and timelines in the shared channel.
- Publish the quarterly performance pack with net loss deviation calculations and reinsurer concentration analysis.
- Re-confirm success criteria and owners
- Create a claims-advocacy action list for any disputed recoveries with deadlines for escalation steps.
- Tabletop scenario or event recap
- Validate that time-to-notify and recovery lag metrics meet the expectations recorded in Outcome Discovery, or capture concrete improvements to meet them.
- Ensure all disputed recoveries have a documented advocacy plan with next steps and dates in the shared channel.
- Publish revised event playbook and updated notification templates within 5 business days of the drill or event.
- Log any changes to authority matrices and confirm that required contacts are current in the shared channel.
- Document the expected evidence package for recoveries and circulate for confirmation before the next material event.
- Confirm critical deployment items (exposure ingestion, model version, authority matrix) are functioning or have committed remediation plans.
- Produce an agreed issue list with owners and target dates to reach the first measurement review.
- Publish the deployment validation checklist and open-issue tracker for async review within 48 hours.
- Complete remediation steps for any data ingestion failures and update the issue tracker with resolution dates.
- Provide a short usage report showing number of validated exposure files and user training completion rate before the next meeting.
- Present first-run metrics
- Determine whether the percentage of exposure files validated and the placement window adherence rate are moving toward targets recorded in Outcome Discovery.
- Agree a concrete remediation plan with dates that will enable a clear acceptance decision at the 90-day gate.
- Produce a metric-source pack showing calculations for exposure-file validation rate and placement window adherence for audit.
- Create and publish a 30/60-day remediation plan for any failed metrics with measurable checkpoints.
- Confirm the date and required deliverables for the acceptance gate meeting.
- Restate acceptance criteria from Outcome Discovery
- Deployment and data validation
- Present outcome data vs each criterion
- Gap diagnosis
- Claims and recoveries status
- Measure response metrics
- Claims advocacy status and disputed recoveries
- Document pass, conditional pass, or fail per criterion
- Reinsurer panel and credit posture
- Agree corrective actions and timelines
- Early adoption and usage signals
- Open issues and enhancement backlog
- Update event playbooks and escalation paths
- Formal acceptance decision and signatory capture
- Confirm readiness for acceptance gate
- Blockers and open issues
- Agree immediate remediation actions
- Agree remediation and verification timeline for any failed or conditional items