Reinsurance Fundamentals is a comprehensive overview of the reinsurance industry and the financial principles that guide it. It is also a penetrating study of real-world reinsurance problems and how to solve them. After an examination of the industry's underpinnings and a brief but fascinating look at its history, author Ross Phifer presents a detailed reinsurance primer. Writing for those familiar with insurance concepts, he offers an in-depth examination of how the reinsurance industry works, explains fundamental ideas, presents practical illustrations of when and how reinsurance arrangements should be considered, and describes the application of reinsurance to speculative financial transactions such as derivatives. Phifer analyzes different types of reinsurance agreements, clause by clause, and supplies thorough explanations of key concepts and their impact on the overall risk transfer. Among the topics discussed are reinsurance cessions, structures, markets, underwriting, proportional pricing, accounting, claims, and contracts. Reinsurance Fundamentals is an invaluable tool for in-house counsel, compliance officers, internal auditors, and risk managers in investment and commercial banking, securities, investment management, mutual funds, and pension fund management. It is also an important resource for corporate financial officers and an excellent reference for insurance underwriters, claims executives, risk managers, and attorneys.

In excess of loss reinsurance, the reinsurer covers the amount of a loss exceeding the policy’s deductible but not piercing its cover limit. Accordingly, a policy’s quantitative scope of cover is significantly affected by the parties’ agreement of a deductible and a cover limit. Yet, the examination of whether a loss has exceeded deductible or cover limit necessitates an educated understanding of what constitutes one loss. In so-called aggregation clauses, the parties to (re-)insurance contracts regularly provide that multiple individual losses are to be added together for presenting one loss to the reinsurer when they arise from the same event, occurrence, catastrophe, cause or accident. Aggregation mechanisms are one of the core instruments for structuring reinsurance contracts. This book systematically examines each element of an aggregation mechanism, tracing the inconsistent usage of aggregation language in the markets and scrutinizing the tests developed by courts and arbitral tribunals. In doing so, it seeks to support insurers, reinsurers, brokers and lawyers in drafting aggregation clauses and in settling claims. Focusing on an analysis of primary sources, particularly judicial decisions, the book interprets each judicial decision to describe a system of inter-related rules, collating, organising and describing the English law of aggregation as applied by the courts and arbitral tribunals. It further draws a comparison between the English position and the corresponding rules in the Principles of Reinsurance Contract Law (PRICL).

Reinsurance is an important production factor of non-life insurance. The efficiency and the capacity of the reinsurance market directly regulate those of insurance markets. The purpose of this book is to provide a concise introduction to risk theory, as well as to its main application procedures to reinsurance. The first part of the book covers risk theory. It presents the most prevalent model of ruin theory, as well as a discussion on insurance premium calculation principles and the mathematical tools that enable portfolios to be ordered according to their risk levels. The second part describes the institutional context of reinsurance. It first strives to clarify the legal nature of reinsurance transactions. It describes the structure of the reinsurance market and then the different legal and technical features of reinsurance contracts, known as reinsurance ‘treaties’ by practitioners. The third part creates a link between the theories presented in the first part and the practice described in the second one. Indeed, it sets out, mostly through examples, some methods for pricing and optimizing reinsurance. The authors aim is to apply the formalism presented in the first part to the institutional framework given in the second part. It is reassuring to find such a relationship between approaches seemingly abstract and solutions adopted by practitioners. Risk Theory and Reinsurance is mainly aimed at master's students in actuarial science but will also be useful for practitioners wishing to revive their knowledge of risk theory or to quickly learn about the main mechanisms of reinsurance.