The CFO and the CRO - InsightCede Blog

At most carriers the ceded numbers reach the finance committee late and hand-assembled: a net-of-reinsurance result from the actuarial team, an ageing of recoverables from the ceded accountant's spreadsheet, a concentration view from the risk function built on last quarter's balances. Each is defensible. They rarely agree to the dollar, and the meeting spends its first twenty minutes on why.

The CFO and the CRO want different things from the outwards programme, but they want them from one set of rows. In InsightCede those rows are the cession ledger and the recoverables raised from it, and every page either reads them or reads a sum of them.

The CFO's question: what did it cost, and what did it pay back?

The Position page is gross to net in one read. It starts from the subject premium the programme saw, takes off what the proportional treaties ceded, adds back the commission they allowed, and shows the excess-of-loss layer premium separately, as a cost of cover rather than a share of anyone's premium. Beside it: what the programme cost against what it paid back, recoverables by age, and the layers closest to running out.

The ceded position page: the gross-to-net waterfall, cost of cover against what it paid back, recoverables ageing, capacity erosion on the layers closest to exhaustion, and alerts for retained loss and gaps — **Read the alerts before the charts.** The first says how much ceded loss had no cover behind it; that number is retained, and a net result that leaves it out is wrong.

Line on the demo position	Figure	Where it comes from
Subject premium	7,425,545.00	Gross premium the treaties were tested against on bind transactions
Ceded premium	14,168,774.93	Quota share cessions of 1,718,774.93, plus booked layer premium on the cat years
Ceding commission	507,038.60	29.5% back on the quota share
Reinstatement premium	724,929.26	Owed by the carrier to reinstate eroded cat limits
Net cost of reinsurance	14,386,665.59	Ceded premium, less commission, plus reinstatement premium
Ceded loss	52,588,347.00	Outstanding plus paid, net of contra entries
Ceded loss ratio	371.2%	Ceded loss over ceded premium
Uncovered and retained	13,000,000.00	A loss above an exhausted layer, kept by the carrier
Recoverable outstanding	52,449,597.00	Billed and unbilled, not yet collected

Those are the demo programme's figures from the live position read — a demo US property-casualty carrier, not a customer, with one bad catastrophe year. Subject premium is smaller than ceded premium because most of the cost is cat layer premium, which is not a share of subject premium at all. The ratio is high because 2025 was the year the cat programme was bought for.

The CRO's question: who owes it, and are they good for it?

A cession says the contract responds. A recoverable is a claim against a named reinsurer for its share, and only that gets money back. The Recoverables page puts unbilled first, because unbilled is recoverable nobody has asked for, then outstanding, overdue and disputed, then the ageing and who holds the balance.

pie showData
    title Recoverable outstanding by reinsurer (demo, $)
    "Munich Re America (30% line)" : 15734879
    "Swiss Re America (25%)" : 13112399
    "SCOR (17.5%)" : 9178679
    "Hannover Re (15%)" : 7867440
    "Lloyd's 2088 (12.5%)" : 6556200

The demo programme's $52,449,597 outstanding, by reinsurer. The shares follow the signed lines almost exactly, because one cat programme produced nearly all of it. The largest slice is the lead's line, not a lapse in credit control.

That chart carries the most useful insight in this post. The counterparty watch agent has an open proposal in the demo queue: Munich Reinsurance America holds 30.0% of what the panel owes, above the 25% concentration limit. It is true, and it is structural. A carrier whose recoverables come mostly from one programme will see each reinsurer's share of the balance converge on its signed line, so a 30% lead breaches a 25% limit by construction. The remedy is not a chaser. It is a decision about the limit, collateral, or the next placement, and the agent's proposal ends by asking the manager to choose.

30.0%of the demo balance owed by the lead

25%the concentration limit, a setting

$0collateral held, across all five

13 dayshow late the cat recoverables are

The recoverables page: unbilled, outstanding, overdue and disputed tiles, the ageing chart, who owes it by reinsurer, and the recoverables list with due dates and days late — **Compare the Overdue tile with the ageing chart.** Everything overdue in the demo sits in the first bucket; the chart is where a slide into 31–90 days shows up first.

Exhaustion is a risk number too

The other figure the CRO reads is capacity. The exhaustion watch agent's alert in the demo queue is on the 2025 property cat year's first layer: both limits used, its one reinstatement gone. Its scenarios are sized from the layer's own limit — a further loss of half the limit, the full limit, or twice the limit — and each shows the same answer, nothing ceded to that layer and the whole amount uncovered by it. The alert notes there is a second layer above and says the evidence does not show whether it would respond, so it assumes no recovery from it.

That restraint is the point. The alert does not price a back-up cover or guess at the second layer's response; it states what the ledger shows and proposes one thing to consider. The $13,000,000 already retained on the position is the same story told after the fact: a loss that reached a layer with nothing left, recorded with the reason “layer exhausted” rather than absorbed into net without comment.

Schedule F, as a draft

The Schedule F agent drafts the statement-year parts by reinsurer from the ledger: ceded premium and ceded loss (paid and outstanding) by each reinsurer's panel share, recoverables by age bucket — current, 1–90, 91–120 and over 120 days — disputed amounts, collateral held and the authorised flag, and a list of what is missing. It is an L1 draft: it is there to be reviewed, and accepting it applies nothing.

Reinsurer	Ceded premium (2026 periods)	Recoverable, 1–90 days	NAIC code
Munich Reinsurance America	3,352,500	15,730,529	missing
Swiss Reinsurance America	2,793,750	13,108,774	missing
SCOR Reinsurance Company	1,955,625	9,176,142	missing
Hannover Rück SE	1,676,250	7,865,265	missing
Lloyd's Syndicate 2088	1,396,875	6,554,387	missing

The draft in the demo queue is a good illustration of why it is a draft. Its premium column totals $11,175,000: three years of cat layer premium, because all three were booked in 2026 periods, and a part is scoped by the accounting period an amount was booked in. Its loss columns for 2026 are zero, because the 2025 cat losses were booked in 2025 periods, while the recoverables raised from them are still outstanding and appear in full. Every reinsurer is marked authorised with no collateral, and none has an NAIC identifier on file — the agent lists all five as missing rather than inventing one. Each of those is a question for the person signing the filing.

A worked example

Helen Achebe, CFO, and Raj Menon, CRO, at Calder Mutual

Quarter-end, the week before the finance committee. Calder's property cat lead writes 30% of every layer; the risk appetite statement sets a 25% concentration limit on recoverables. A windstorm has made $18,400,000 recoverable, of which the lead owes $5,520,000.

One quarter-end, two readers

Monday
Helen reads the position
Net cost of reinsurance for the year, cost of cover against what it paid back, and one red line: $3,000,000 retained above an exhausted layer. She asks for that figure to be shown in the committee pack as its own line, not netted into the ceded result.
Tuesday
Raj reads the concentration proposal
The counterparty watch agent has prepared it: the lead at 30% of the balance against a 25% limit, rated A+, no collateral. Raj recognises it as structural — the lead's line is 30% — and takes two options to the committee: amend the limit for the lead, or ask for collateral.
Wednesday
The ageing slide
Nothing is beyond 90 days; one reinsurer's disputed item is in the 31–90 band with an escalation proposal waiting for the ceded manager. Helen asks to see the decision record before the meeting.
Thursday
Schedule F, reviewed early
The year-end draft is opened in October, not February. Two NAIC codes are missing and the authorised flag on one reinsurer is wrong in the master. Both are fixed at the source months before the filing.

Illustrative composite. The figures are internally consistent and every step is one the product supports today.

CFOReads the cost and the retained loss

Net cost of reinsurance, ceded loss ratio, reinstatement premium owed, and what was retained above an exhausted layer. Wants every figure to reconcile to a statement.

CROReads the counterparties

Who owes what, how late, against what limit, with what rating and collateral, and what the news says about them. Wants the remedy to be a decision with a name on it.

Assist answering “Which reinsurer owes us the most and is any of it late?”: Munich owes $15,730,529.10, all of it late, with a table by reinsurer, notes, and the source ledger recoverables — **Read the third note under the table.** “The per-reinsurer totals are my own sums of the line items.” The copilot cites the ledger tool it read and says when a figure is its own arithmetic.

A 30% lead breaches a 25% limit by construction. The useful answer is a decision about the limit, not a reminder to the lead.

What it does not do

Schedule F is not filed from here. The agent drafts the parts for review. There is no filing format and no export in the regulator's layout, and accepting the draft records agreement without applying anything.
The master is taken on trust. Ratings, the authorised flag, collateral held and NAIC codes come from the reinsurer master as loaded. Cede flags what is missing; it does not verify what is there.
No feed to the capital model. The published reads are the net position, a claim's net and recoverable ageing. A capital model takes them as an export, not through a contract built for it.
Collections are recorded by a person. “Collected” on the demo position is $0 because no collection has been recorded. Until someone records the cash, every recoverable reads as owed.

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