Market

Tokyo reinsurance: JFSA flavour, yen accounts, Japan CAT, and the 1 April year

Tokyo runs on yen, Japan CAT, and a 1 April renewal that is not London's 1 January. The Financial Services Agency flavours reporting. Reinsured.AI does not hold a Japan licence. This page is earthquake and typhoon schedules, JPY bordereaux, and retrocession files that must cite the same event definition.

Tokyo's distinctive calendar is 1 April. Japanese non-life programmes, including the catastrophe covers that matter for earthquake and typhoon, often incept with the fiscal year, not with London's 1 January. The Financial Services Agency — JFSA in market shorthand — supervises (re)insurers and flavours the reporting pack. This page uses that flavour. It does not invent a Japan licence for Reinsured.AI, and it does not put us in Marunouchi as a licensed writer.

Placing customs are domestic first, then retrocession out. Japanese cedents retain large shares, buy domestic reinsurance and pool-flavoured covers, and then offer retrocession to London, Bermuda, Singapore, and continental Europe. The inbound file is often in Japanese with an English summary. The English summary is not the wording. Yen is the accounting currency until someone quietly posts USD because the retro slip was in dollars. That rate as-at is a field or a gap.

The Retrocession Agent is the named worker for the outward programme: the retro wording, the inuring inbound cover, and the conflicts between them. Treaty reinsurance is the ops hub for attachment, reinstatement, and hours. Facultative reinsurance still appears when a Tokyo tower or a Kansai plant is offered risk-by-risk. The brokers hub is how that pack should be built. Do not treat a Japanese-language PDF as optional because the covering email was in English.

Japan CAT is an event-definition problem

Earthquake, typhoon, and flood are not interchangeable perils because a slide said CAT. Hours clauses, aftershock language, and whether two typhoons are one event are the clauses people paraphrase and then cannot find. If the inbound Japan cover uses a 72-hour typhoon clause and the outward retro uses 96 hours, you have a basis conflict sitting in the same group. Show both pages. Do not pick the retro because it is in English.

Fire following earthquake, tsunami, and liquefaction sit in some wordings and not others. A pack that extracts "EQ" as a single flag has not extracted the cover. The occupancy of a Tokyo office tower, the construction year, and the seismic retrofit note on the SOV are fields. Averaging them into a prefecture PML is how you price a building you did not read.

Model reports — RMS, AIR, or an in-house Japan model — are documents. A pasted AAL in a broker email is not a span. Reinsurance AI is the argument for leaving the model PDF in the pack and citing the page, not the chat.

1 April versus the international 1/1

A Tokyo desk that also buys international casualty or writes inbound overseas business will have 1/1 files in the same mailbox as 1/4 Japan CAT. Those are different years of account. Monte Carlo talks about the next 1/1. Japan renewals are already in motion on a different clock. See events for what those meetings are for. Do not treat a Rendez-Vous badge as a signed 1/4 retro.

The ops failure is a shared ACME folder. ACME Construction Ltd's Japanese contractor book renews 1 April. Its small overseas engineering cession renews 1 January through a Singapore sister. Posting a September typhoon to the 1/1 international treaty because both mention ACME is a claims fight.

Documents a Tokyo retro desk actually moves

Typical files:

• Japanese wordings and English translations; the translation loses if they conflict unless the contract says otherwise
• Slips for outward retrocession to London, Bermuda, or Singapore, often in USD
• SOVs in yen, with prefecture, construction, and year built as columns that must be mappable
• Earthquake and typhoon exposure files with as-at dates
• Premium and claims bordereaux in JPY, sometimes restated after a late fiscal close
• Inuring inbound covers that the retro must follow
• JFSA or statutory exhibits as documents to extract from, not as filings we submit

Yen scaling is an ops leak unique to this market. A TIV printed as 12,000 million yen on one sheet and 12,000,000,000 on another is the same number or a units error. Do not guess. Flag the units. A retro limit of USD 100,000,000 against an inbound yen layer needs a cited rate as-at, not a breakfast FX print.

The illustration of Tokyo retro file work, labelled as an illustration and not as customer proof, is the Tokyo reinsurer retrocession illustration. It is not a JFSA letter and not a logo.

ACME Construction Ltd in Chiyoda

Walk a fictional file. ACME Construction Ltd, domain acme.example, is reinforcing a Chiyoda office tower and a warehouse in Chiba. The 1/4 inbound quota share is JPY, class construction, territory Japan, earthquake sublimit in endorsement 4. The outward retro slip shown to London is USD 50,000,000 xs USD 50,000,000, "Japan CAT," 96-hour clause, no mention of endorsement 4. The SOV lists the Chiba warehouse as wood-frame; the slip occupancy is fire-resistive commercial. The loss run has no as-at date.

The sublimit, the hours mismatch, the construction conflict, and the stale run are four gaps. A Tokyo retro buyer who sends the English slip without endorsement 4 has offered a different cover than they bought. The pack should show the inuring earthquake language next to the retro hours. Do not translate the warehouse into fire-resistive because the tower is.

This page will not invent a JFSA licence. It will not publish a Japan CAT ROI. It will not display carrier logos. Humans still set the retro structure. Software can cite the 1/4 incept, the yen units, and the endorsement the English slip forgot.