Serving the Reinsurance Customer
Who the customer is
In reinsurance the "customer" is the ceding insurer, and the relationship is intermediated by a broker or handled directly by the reinsurer's marketing/underwriting staff. A candidate must understand the service chain: ceding company underwriters and actuarial staff, the intermediary, the reinsurer's client manager, and the treaty or facultative underwriter who actually prices risk. Service quality is judged on responsiveness, technical support, claims turnaround, and capacity reliability, not on retail-style metrics.
Core concepts to know
- Value-added services: reinsurers differentiate through underwriting manuals, pricing tools, claims and actuarial consulting, and product development support.
- The marketing/underwriting interface: client managers build relationships; underwriters retain pricing authority. Confusing these roles is a common trap.
- Ethics and confidentiality: reinsurers see cedents' confidential loss and pricing data; misuse or cross-subsidy conflicts are exam favorites.
- Market conduct: timeliness of claims payment, clarity of contract wording, and dispute resolution behavior all affect the relationship.
Traps in questions
Questions often describe a retail service standard and ask you to apply it to reinsurance. The correct answer usually emphasizes technical partnership and prompt claims handling over advertising or consumer-facing convenience. Another trap: assuming the broker is the customer. The broker is an intermediary; the cedent is the customer.
Rule of thumb
Treat every service decision as if the cedent can choose another reinsurer at renewal: if an action would damage trust in confidentiality, speed, or technical honesty, it is the wrong answer.
Worked example: A cedent asks for help pricing a new liability product. The client manager should coordinate, but the underwriter and actuary supply the technical input, and any use of the cedent's data must stay within the relationship's confidentiality expectations.