The Bordereau is one of the most underappreciated aspects of an insurance relationship between two parties. Most of you reading this have probably heard of the word, but may not know precisely what it means (or does). (IRMI provides a good background here: https://www.irmi.com/articles/expert-commentary/reinsurance-terminology-explained-bordereau ). In summary – a bordereau is just a status notification summary of the amount of insurance sold by an entity (and the amount of losses paid or reserved by the same entity) to its backer. This could be an MGA to its insurer or the insurer to its reinsurer. Regardless of the relationship, the bordereau is meant to summarize the most recent activity.

Having now been a party to multiple MGA/insurer/reinsurer transactions, I can confirm, that the bordereau transaction is 100% an afterthought in any of the insurance relationships where capacity is being provided. In the build-up to a new program to be managed by an MGA, for instance, pretty much 0% of the negotiations discuss the bordereau. Program guidelines could be tens of pages long describing all sorts of complicated agreements, but almost nothing is discussed about how the status of the business is to be reported between parties. Somehow, a spreadsheet, pdf, word doc (or worse) is to be made available between parties and from this the parties will know if the guidelines are being followed and whether the program is making progress…OR NOT!

This is one of the legacy issues from within insurance that can easily be solved with technology. Yet, this is still a major issue. In this latest episode of The Yellow Book Road Podcast, I discuss the headache that is bordereaux and how to solve it with Wendy Aarons-Corman of OWIT Global and Barry Bablin of American National. The bordereau can actually be a tool of credibility for an up and coming MGA. It is where credibility and trust can be enhanced between two parties. It is a topic that we need to take more seriously.

WATCH FULL EPISODE HERE:
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