How does bordereaux reconciliation work?

Bordereaux reconciliation is row-level checking of a cedent's premium, claims, or commission file against the treaty wording and against what you already booked. It is not a vibe that the total looked close to last quarter. Close is exceptions listed, spans for the terms you applied, and a human sign-off on the residual.

Cedents produce the file. Reinsurers ingest it. Both sides reconcile. The jobs are mirrors. Mixing premium and claims into one tab is a common cause of false breaks. The long method is the bordereaux automation guide. This page is the working order.

Order of work

Wording spans first. File cells second. Booking third.

Extract share or attachment, class, territory, period, currency, commission basis, and claims definitions from the treaty. Then map the inbound columns. Then test each row. Then total. A mapper that starts from last quarter's headers will silently bind the wrong field when this quarter inserts a column.

Treaty reinsurance names the contract. Cedent reporting is the outbound pack. Reinsurer operations is the inbound pack. Reconciliation is the join.

A numbered ACME file

Fictional walkthrough: ACME Construction Ltd, acme.example, appears on the Q2 2026 premium bordereau. The sheet lists 14 policies and a ceded premium total of USD 2,400,000 in the grand-total cell. The covering email restates USD 2,400,000. Two of the 14 policies are ACME-related locations. One ACME row uses class "property — construction" with sum insured USD 10,000,000. The other ACME row is a warehouse with TIV USD 5,100,000 that matches the extra location on the facultative SOV (slip TIV USD 42,000,000 versus SOV USD 47,100,000). The treaty excludes warehouses in a named flood zone. That second row is an exception with a span into the exclusion and a cell into the sheet. It is not a rounding difference on the USD 2,400,000.

If the covering email total matches a subtotal row, not the grand total, that is a conflict against the total cell. Do not book the email. If currency is mixed without a rate as-at, stop. If two policies sit outside period, they are year-of-account exceptions, not "timing."

Claims reconciliation adds event date versus report date versus period. An ACME loss reported in Q2 for an event in last year's period is prior-year development or a new claim according to the wording, not according to the tab name. If event date is empty, attachment to period cannot be shown. That is a gap, not a booking. Paid plus outstanding on ACME must be testable against quota-share share or against XoL attachment. Ground-up USD 8,200,000 on a USD 5,000,000 attachment is not the same recovery as 30 percent of 8,200,000.

What reconciliation is not

It is not matching two grand totals and calling the file done. It is not a chat summary of the workbook. It is not posting ACME's facultative premium onto the treaty bordereau because the name matched. Facultative leftover is a different contract.

Restatements need a bridge. If Q1 ACME premium is restated in the Q2 file with no line-level explanation, the break is a gap in the accounts pack. IBNR conversations that use a claims bordereau with no as-at date are not reconciliations. They are charts of an undated extract.

Keep premium, claims, and commission as three jobs even when the cedent combined them. Commission that does not foot to the cited ceding-commission clause is an exception, not a balancing figure. Guessed totals do not close the quarter. They delay the dispute.