What is a Bordereaux?
A bordereaux (plural: bordereaux) is a detailed schedule submitted by a cedent or MGA to their reinsurer, providing a record of individual risks, premiums, or losses covered under a reinsurance or binding authority contract. The term comes from the French word for "list."
Bordereaux are submitted periodically — typically monthly or quarterly — and form the basis for reinsurance premium settlements, loss accounting, and portfolio monitoring. They are particularly prevalent in Lloyd's market binding authority business, where coverholders write business on behalf of syndicates and must report their books regularly.
The critical problem with bordereaux is their lack of standardisation. Despite industry efforts including Lloyd's LBS standard, bordereaux arrive in hundreds of different formats depending on each cedent's systems and preferences.
Types of Bordereaux
Premium Bordereaux
Lists individual policies written and premiums ceded during the period. Used to calculate premium settlements between cedent and reinsurer.
Loss Bordereaux
Details individual claims and loss payments during the period. Used to recover losses from reinsurers and monitor loss development.
Risk Bordereaux
Lists all risks currently in-force under a binding authority. Provides the reinsurer with a full view of the portfolio.
Claims Bordereaux
Subset of loss bordereaux focused specifically on open claims, reserves, and claim movements.
The Reconciliation Problem
The core challenge is not the data itself — it is the format diversity. A reinsurer with 60 active cedents might receive bordereaux in 60 different Excel layouts, with different column names, date formats, currency conventions, and coverage codes. Manual reconciliation requires:
Opening each file and identifying the relevant columns
Mapping source column names to your internal data schema
Validating data quality — checking for missing values, out-of-range amounts, duplicate policies
Reconciling totals against treaty terms and prior-period expectations
Flagging discrepancies for cedent queries
Re-keying validated data into your policy admin or accounting system
Producing the settlement statement for the cedent
For a reinsurer with 50 active cedents each submitting monthly, this typically amounts to 20–40 hours per month of operations analyst time — time that contributes no underwriting or analytical value whatsoever.
How Bordereaux Automation Works
Reinsured.AI's Bordereaux Agent handles the full reconciliation workflow automatically:
Monitors email, SFTP, and API channels. Detects new bordereaux automatically on receipt.
AI identifies document structure and maps column names to your target schema regardless of source format.
Checks data quality against configurable rules. Flags missing values, duplicates, and out-of-range amounts with confidence scores.
Compares totals against treaty terms, prior periods, and settlement expectations. Raises discrepancy queries automatically.
Clean, validated data posted directly to your system of record via API. Full audit trail maintained.
Settlement statements generated and emailed to cedents automatically.
ROI & Benchmarks
The ROI scales linearly with bordereaux volume. A reinsurer processing 30 bordereaux per month saves approximately 15 analyst-hours monthly; a reinsurer processing 200 bordereaux per month saves 100+ hours. The saving compounds through the elimination of settlement discrepancies caused by re-keying errors — which typically account for 2–4% of settlement disputes.
Implementation Steps
List all cedents and MGAs, their formats, submission frequency, and current processing time. This baseline lets you measure ROI from day one.
Provide email inbox, SFTP, or API access where cedents send files. The agent monitors this channel and triggers processing automatically on receipt.
Confirm column mapping to your policy admin or accounting system. The AI maps each cedent's source format automatically.
Set treaty-level checks: premium totals, loss ratio thresholds, policy count limits, currency conversions. Agent flags violations immediately.
First batch processes within hours. Review confidence scores, approve or override flagged items. Accuracy improves each cycle.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a bordereaux in reinsurance?
A bordereaux is a detailed schedule submitted by a cedent or MGA to their reinsurer, providing a record of individual risks, premiums, or losses covered under a reinsurance or binding authority contract. Premium bordereaux list policies written and premiums ceded; loss bordereaux list claims and loss payments. They are typically submitted monthly or quarterly and form the basis for reinsurance accounting settlements.
Why is bordereaux reconciliation so time-consuming?
Bordereaux arrive in dozens of different formats — Excel spreadsheets with inconsistent column names, PDFs, CSV files, and even paper-based formats. Each cedent has their own layout. Reconciliation requires manually mapping each cedent's columns to your internal data schema, validating data quality, checking totals against treaty terms, and posting to your systems of record. A mid-sized reinsurer processing 50+ cedents can spend 20-40 hours per month on this work.
What is bordereaux automation?
Bordereaux automation uses AI to automatically ingest bordereaux in any format, extract and validate the data, reconcile against treaty terms, flag discrepancies, and post clean data to your systems of record — without manual re-keying. The AI learns each cedent's specific format and handles variations automatically.
How accurate is AI bordereaux extraction?
Purpose-built bordereaux AI agents achieve 95-99% extraction accuracy on structured Excel and CSV formats, and 90-95% on PDF bordereaux. Confidence scores are provided for every extracted field, and low-confidence items are flagged for human review rather than silently posted. Over time, accuracy improves as the model learns each cedent's specific patterns.
Can AI handle bordereaux in different formats from different cedents?
Yes. Rather than requiring cedents to use a standard template, the AI learns each cedent's specific column names, layouts, and data conventions. It maps these automatically to your internal schema regardless of whether the cedent calls a field 'Policy No.', 'Pol Ref', 'Certificate Number', or 'Risk ID'.
How long does it take to implement bordereaux automation?
With a purpose-built platform, bordereaux automation can be live within 48 hours for standard Excel and CSV formats. PDF extraction requires a brief training period of 5-10 sample documents per cedent format. Full onboarding of all cedents typically completes within 2-4 weeks.
What is the ROI of bordereaux automation?
Based on production deployments: 80-90% reduction in manual processing time, elimination of re-keying errors which typically cause 3-5% settlement discrepancies, faster month-end close, and 2-3x increase in the number of cedents a single analyst can manage. Payback period is typically 3-4 months.
Does bordereaux automation work with Lloyd's market bordereaux?
Yes. Lloyd's bordereaux follow the LBS (Lloyd's Billing System) standard for coverholder and binding authority business, but in practice significant variation exists. Reinsured.AI's bordereaux agent handles both LBS-compliant bordereaux and the many non-standard formats used by coverholders across the Lloyd's market.
Automate your bordereaux today
See the Bordereaux Agent processing one of your actual bordereaux files in a 30-minute demonstration.