Series · 🔒 Private

Notes on Reinsurance

A structured lecture series on reinsurance for an audience that knows general insurance and premium accounting but is not deep on reinsurance. Sources: Swiss Re and Munich Re primers, IRDAI regulations, IC-85 courseware, and the published accounts of Indian non-life insurers.

10 lessons~2 hr 46 min read
  1. 01Indian Reinsurance Regulation, Layer by Layer 🔒Part 01 of Notes on Reinsurance. Where the rules actually live — from the Insurance Act 1938 to the FY 2026-27 obligatory cession notification. The three regulatory layers, the current 4% number, and where it bites you in practice.8 min
  2. 02What Reinsurance Actually Does 🔒Part 02 of Notes on Reinsurance. A working definition, the four economic functions, and the four ways reinsurance is structured — distilled from the Swiss Re and Munich Re primers, with the Swiss Re numeric examples worked through.15 min
  3. 03Form B-RA, Line by Line 🔒Part 03 of Notes on Reinsurance. Reading the reinsurance schedule in a real Indian non-life insurer's published account — New India Assurance FY 2024-25. Cession ratios by line, the reinsurance balance, and what an analyst should walk away with.15 min
  4. 04Reading a Treaty 🔒Part 04 of Notes on Reinsurance. The clauses that actually do the work — a walk through proportional treaty wording, anchored on R.L. Carter's clause-by-clause exegesis. The operative clause, the retention, the commission scale, follow the fortunes.18 min
  5. 05How Retention Is Actually Set 🔒Part 05 of Notes on Reinsurance. Loss distributions, capital, and the acceptable-fluctuation problem. Beard's ruin-probability framework, the Indian practitioner's rules of thumb, and what a reinsurance committee actually decides.17 min
  6. 06Treaty Accounting and the Cash Side 🔒Part 06 of Notes on Reinsurance. The quarterly treaty account, premium and loss reserves withheld, profit commission, and the working-capital story that nobody talks about. Carter Ch. 14 + IC-85 Ch. 9 read together.24 min
  7. 07The Indian Reinsurance Market 🔒Part 07 of Notes on Reinsurance. GIC Re, the four pools, the order of preference, and the institutional structure of the residual market — what the regulations look like from the inside.18 min
  8. 08Reading GIC Re's Accounts 🔒Part 08 of Notes on Reinsurance. A walk through the published numbers of India's sole national reinsurer — premium, combined ratio, retrocession, solvency. The numerical view of the institution described in Part 07.17 min
  9. 09Ind AS 117 and the Reinsurance-Held Module 🔒Part 09 of Notes on Reinsurance. The accounting standard about to displace forty years of treaty-account-based measurement — the three measurement models, CSM on reinsurance held, the loss-recovery component, and what changes for the cedent.16 min
  10. 10Modern Catastrophe Modelling 🔒Part 10 of Notes on Reinsurance. Where XL prices actually come from — probabilistic event sets, exceedance curves, the four major vendors, and the Indian peril stack. The closing piece in the first arc of the series.18 min