What is an insurance broker in reinsurance?

A reinsurance broker is a routing system for files. The cedent wants capacity. Markets write lines, or they do not. The broker packages the risk, sends the same version to the people who have appetite, collects written terms, and then has to live with the administration: documents, bordereaux, premium, claims. Advocacy in a dispute is a later job. Completeness at submission is the job that prevents the dispute.

The inbox is the system of record until a pack exists. Until then, every underwriter is guessing, chasing, or quoting a ghost. Cover emails lie by omission. The work is to open every attachment, copy fields with spans, flag gaps, flag conflicts, and produce a chase list a technician can work before the pack leaves the building.

How it works

Facultative placing is a pack per risk. Treaty placing is a portfolio contract and a different completeness test. Mixing both into one undifferentiated submissions folder is how a facultative TIV gets discussed as if it were a treaty board. Name the job on the file.

A useful outbound pack is boring. Slip or MRC. Schedule that sums. Loss history with as-at. Wording excerpts that govern. A one-page chase list. Incomplete packs burn a market. Over-complete packs that bury a slip-versus-schedule split are worse. If the slip and the SOV disagree, say so on the first screen.

Commission is a commercial term in the placing documents. It is not a reason to skip the hours clause. Software that sends mail as the broker is a different trust boundary from software that reads a mailbox. Read-only ingest can build the pack and the list. It does not place the line.

Worked example

The broker's fictional file is ACME Construction Ltd, acme.example. Slip page 1: named insured, period 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026. Slip page 2: USD 10,000,000 any one occurrence, TIV USD 42,000,000. SOV.xlsx: USD 47,100,000. Hours clause not in the pack. SOV as-at not in the pack.

The chase list should name hours clause and SOV as-at as gaps, and TIV as a conflict to resolve, not as missing TIV. Sending that list with the pack is faster than sending a zip and a paragraph that restates the limit. Sending the lower TIV only, because it is neater, is how a following market quotes a warehouse that was never offered — or how a claim arrives on a location the slip never had.

What goes wrong

Version forks: leader sees SOV v2, following market sees v3. Assistants re-key from the cover email. Treaty and facultative live in one mailbox named submissions. Chase lists freeze in a PDF from Tuesday and stay wrong on Wednesday. Certificates issue without a check against written lines.

Related reading

The buyer view is broker operations. The pack checklist is how to build a facultative submission pack. The shared queue language is what is a chase list in reinsurance submissions?.