What is the difference between premium and claims bordereaux?

Premium bordereaux list what was written or ceded in a period. Claims bordereaux list losses, payments, and reserves. They are two ledgers. Mixing them into one tab because the email subject said "bordereaux" is how you get a false break: a premium total that cannot foot to a claims file, or a paid figure that someone treats as ceded premium.

What are bordereaux in reinsurance? is the parent definition. This page is the split operators actually fight over.

Premium files

A premium bordereau is the cedent's schedule of subject business for the treaty period: policy or certificate references, named insureds, periods, class, territory, limits, written or earned premium, cession, and often commission when it belongs on that file. The completeness test is whether a reinsurer can see that the cession matches the wording's definition of subject business.

Rows fail in ordinary ways. Class blank when the treaty excludes a class. Territory blank. Period overlapping two treaty years with no split. Gross and ceded mixed in one amount. A total row that is a typed number, not a sum. Each of those is a query waiting to happen. Premium files support cession checks, commission basis, and whether a risk should have been on the treaty at all.

Claims files

A claims bordereau is the schedule of loss activity: notice dates, loss dates, paid, outstanding, recoveries, status. The completeness test is whether each row can be tested against attachment, hours clause, occurrence versus aggregate, and excluded causes. A paid figure with no loss date is not a claims row. It is a number.

Claims files support recoveries, reinstatements, and IBNR conversations. Event date versus report date versus period is the usual fight. A loss reported this quarter for an event in last year's period is either prior-year development or a new claim, according to the wording's basis, not according to the sheet tab name. If event date is empty, attachment to period cannot be shown. That is a gap, not a booking.

Why mixing them breaks reconciliation

How does bordereaux reconciliation work? is row-level work against a wording. Premium rows and claims rows do not share a completeness test. Flattening them so the covering email can carry one attachment is how you hide a missing loss date next to a missing class, then argue about a grand total that never existed on either ledger.

Keep two files, or two clearly bounded sheets. Name the treaty, the period, and the basis on each cover. Do not reuse last quarter's column map when the admin system added a field. If a row cannot cite its source extract, it is an internal chase item, not an outbound fact.

Worked example: ACME Construction Ltd

Fictional check used on this site: ACME Construction Ltd, acme.example. If that risk sits on a facultative certificate, its ceded premium and any loss belong on the files that match that contract. They do not belong on a treaty premium bordereau for a different class because the spreadsheet tab was handy. If a claims bordereau then lists a paid loss for ACME Construction Ltd against the treaty layer, you have posted a facultative recovery onto the wrong contract. Two numbers, two contracts, two files. Merging them because the insured name matched is how recoveries get argued twice.

The cedent reporting job is outbound: produce files a reinsurer can post. Automation should keep the two ledgers separate, map each to the same treaty year rules, then surface gaps a human can chase. Software that invents a combined total to make month-end look closed is on the wrong side of the fight. Humans still send the file. Machines show which rows have spans and which do not.