Reinsurance is usually delineated as a kind of insurance that is designed specifically for companies. It’s a method for insurance companies to transmit some of the fiscal hazards they accept when preparing insurance policies. This is conducted by transferring some of their hazards to another insurance company, the reinsurer. This keeps traditional insurers safe against conditions where they don’t have sufficient money to pay off all the claims owed.

By law, insurance must have sufficient money to pay out potential claims on all policies written. As is expounded by the Insurance Information Institute: “Insurer can lessen its obligation, or responsibility, for these claims by conveying a part of them to another insurer. This will lessen the amount of capital it must retain and please regulators.”

The reinsurance business is developing. Generally, reinsurance financial affairs were between two insurance organizations: the main insurer that sold the primary insurance policies and the reinsurer. Main insurers and reinsurers can divide both the premiums and losses or reinsurers may shoulder the original company’s losses above a specific money limit in return for a payment. Still, hazards of different types, specifically of natural calamities, are now being sold by insurers and reinsurers to organizational investors in the shape of disaster bonds and other surrogate risk-scattering procedures. Growingly, new items show a slow combination of reinsurance and investment banking.

As an industry, reinsurance is less organized than insurance for individual clients because the buyers of reinsurance, chiefly primary companies that sell a car, home or commercial insurance, are regarded as complicated purchasers.

Types of reinsurance

Reinsurance can be bifurcated into two main types: treaty and facultative. Treaties are consensuses that incorporate extensive groups of policies, like all of a main insurer’s auto business. Facultative includes special individuals, usually high-value or dangerous risks, such as a hospital, that would not be admitted under a treaty.

In most treaty consensuses, once the conditions of the contract including the types of hazards met have been set, all policies that are included within those terms – in many cases both new and previous business—are covered, typically automatically, until the consensus is called off.

With facultative reinsurance, the reinsurer must assume the individual “hazard”, say a hospital, just as the main company would, examining all facets of the operation and the hospital’s outlook and record on immunity. Furthermore, the reinsurer would also bring into account the outlook and management of the main insurer looking for reinsurance coverage. This kind of reinsurance is named facultative because the reinsurer has the authority or “faculty” to admit or refuse all or a part of any policy presented to it in conflict with treaty reinsurance, under which it must admit all applicable policies once the consensus is signed.

Treaty and facultative reinsurance consensuses can be built on a “pro rata” (proportional) or “excess of loss” (non-proportional) foundation, depending on the array by which losses are distributed between the two insurers.

In a proportional consensus, usually used for property insurances, the reinsurer and the main company distribute both the premium from the policyholder and the potential losses.

In an excess of loss consensus, the main company sustains a specific amount of liability for losses (referred to as the ceding company’s maintenance) and defrays an amount to the reinsurer for coverage above that amount, usually exposed to a stable upper limit. Excess of loss consensuses may be applicable to individual policies, to a situation such as a typhoon that influences many policyholders or to the main insurer’s total losses above a specific amount, per policy or year.

An original company’s reinsurance plan can be very complicated. Easily put, if it were diagrammed, it might sound like a pyramid with raising dollar levels of coverage for growingly far events, divided among several reinsurance companies each shouldering a part. It would incorporate layers of proportional and excess of loss treaties, and probably a facultative excess of loss layer at the ridge.

Facultative reinsurance

With facultative reinsurance dealings, the ceding company can present an individual risk or a delineated package of risks to a reinsurer. The reinsurer sustains the right to admit or refuse the risk, just like the primary insurer has the right to choose whether to insure a policyholder. Under a facultative consensus, the reinsurer will operate on its own assuming for some or all of the policies to be reinsured, and each policy is regarded as a single transaction.

Facultative reinsurance is usually utilized for high-value or perilous risks because the policies can be suitable for special conditions. It can sometimes be less interesting to the ceding company, because the reinsurer may persist the ceding company maintains some of the liability on the most dangerous policies. In those scenarios, the ceding company may have to approximate various reinsurers to transmit any remaining liability.

Treaty reinsurance

Treaty reinsurance agreements are usually long-term, and they will admit policies that the ceding company has not yet written, as long as they agree with the treaty’s pre-determined risk class. The reinsurer usually wants to acquire profit, but these expectations are calculated and adapted over time.

In contradiction with facultative agreements, reinsurers do not perform individual undertaking on the hazards assumed via treaty arrangements. That responsibility is devoted to the ceding company, which is why reinsurers will hardly work to ensure the ceding company is performing enough undertaking processes before entering a treaty.