What causes reinsurance contract disputes?

Reinsurance disputes start as file disagreements that were never stored as conflicts. Two spans for TIV. A hours clause nobody can find. A claims-made report date treated as an occurrence date. A bordereau class that the wording excludes. By the time lawyers arrive, someone has already booked a number that was not on the page.

The contract is the wording, the slip, the certificate, the endorsements, and the cited bordereau rows. Covering emails, pricing memos, and chat summaries are not a second contract. If they disagree with the signed text, you have a conflict object, not a vibe about intent.

How it works

Common fights have names. Attachment and limit: where the layer starts and stops. Event definition and hours: whether two weather peaks are one event. Follow-the-fortunes and follow-the-settlements: what the reinsurer is bound by, and what the cedent still has to prove. Exclusions: flood zone, occupancy, war, cyber, named perils. Late notice. Bordereau error versus coverage denial. Claims-made versus occurrence on the same original loss.

Prevention is boring. Extract terms with spans. Leave gaps empty. Keep conflicts visible. Send a chase list before the quote, and an exception list before the booking. Arbitration clauses are in the wording or they are a gap. This page will not invent a win rate for negotiation versus formal process.

Worked example

ACME Construction Ltd, acme.example, warehouse fire after a windstorm. Cedent presents USD 8,400,000. Slip TIV was USD 42,000,000. Schedule TIV was USD 47,100,000 because the warehouse was added after the slip was typed. Occurrence limit USD 10,000,000 on slip page 2. Hours clause never in the pack.

The coverage fight is whether the warehouse was on the facultative slip or only on the schedule. Averaging TIV does not decide it. A CAT XOL event fight sits next door: if the wind and the fire are one event under a missing hours clause, attachment arithmetic moves. If a claims-made liability notice for the same warehouse arrives in a later year, a third trigger argument joins the pile. Store each disagreement as two spans or as a named gap. Do not let a settlement spreadsheet invent a fourth TIV.

What goes wrong

Reservation of rights letters without a cited clause. Underwriting files that cannot show what was disclosed. Restated bordereaux with no bridge. Certificate share not equal to the written line. Retrocessionaire denial treated as an inward coverage answer. Models that pick a number when the page is silent. That last one manufactures disputes. Empty would have been honest.

Related reading

Keep terms sourced via source-grounded extraction. Treaty terms live on treaty reinsurance. Trigger language is what is claims-made coverage in reinsurance?.