Bifröst is a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform supporting cedents, brokers and reinsurers. It aims at helping them during the reinsurance renewal process for treaties and facultatives. The platform enables all participants to track, report and take the best data-backed decisions.Today, we introduce a new feature: Bifröst Wording.
Bifröst Wording enables all participants in the reinsurance contract negotiation to easily track, manage and adapt it; from contract import to electronic signature.
What is “wording negotiation” in reinsurance?
A reinsurance treaty (or contract, or wording) is, as any contract signed between different parties, a legal document which states an agreement between those parties. In the case of reinsurance it defines which risks are covered - or excluded - under what conditions and at what price, and is signed by an insurer and a reinsurer. A reinsurance contract is usually composed of general terms, special terms and sometimes appendices. Side letters may be added during the life of the reinsurance agreement.During a renewal, prices, shares and commissions are negotiated between participants. But contract wordings are also part of it, and wording is usually renegotiated every year. It is one of the most important elements during the negotiation and placement process.
How is wording negotiation currently done?
Wording negotiation is managed by brokers or insurers’ legal teams. On each treaty, lead reinsurers are involved in the reinsurance contract negotiation and will be in charge, on behalf of all participating reinsurers, to negotiate it. Usually, lead reinsurers are reinsurers who will underwrite the largest share of the treaty and will also negotiate the price.Some confirmed examples have appeared during the last few years and because of the rise of emerging risks (such as cyber) or large unexpected events (such as covid-19), reinsurers want to add new exclusions on existing treaties or make the wording more explicit.All these exchanges between cedents, brokers and reinsurers take place by email or in different Word files. This makes modification and proposition tracking very cumbersome, time consuming, and a source of operational error during reporting.
How is Bifröst Wording solving this problem?
Bifröst Wording enables all participants in the reinsurance contract negotiation to easily track, manage and adapt it; from contract import to electronic signature.
Bifröst Wording improves the end-to-end negotiation process, with the ability to:
• Start writing a new reinsurance contract
• Import a pre-existing one. To make the switch to our platform easier, our proprietary AI automatically divides pre-existing contracts into articles by sections (General terms, Special terms, Appendices). It allows the broker or the insurer to save considerable time and avoid operational errors
• Interconnect the reinsurance broker or the insurer with all reinsurers involved in the contract negotiation. Users can send different reinsurance contracts on the same treaty in case of differentiated conditions.
• Track comments and changes: involved reinsurers can submit changes on wording or comment on it and users will receive real-time notifications on the platform to easily track them. As soon as a change or a comment is received by users, they can adapt the wording for all or part of the reinsurers.
• Create a library of articles where the user can easily reuse articles from one reinsurance contract to another.
• Manage versions: users can access and compare previous versions thanks to the history feature.
• Generate the final contract with customizable headers and footers.
• Send the reinsurance contract via Bifröst to reinsurers for electronic signature. Users are notified when a reinsurer has signed but also when a reinsurer has not yet signed at a defined date. This allows to track e-signature and to send back a notification to reinsurers.
Conclusion
Bifröst is an all-in-one platform centralizing all your reinsurance contracts allowing users to focus on high value-added tasks and leaving repetitive and error-prone tasks behind.
If you want to know more about our platform and discover all the features, you can book a slot to get a demo of Bifröst.
