Reinsurers are price takers in the firm order terms (FOT) process. The cedent sets pricing and then solicits authorizations from reinsurers – while coverage terms may be negotiated, prices are held firm. Even when reinsurers are invited to quote before terms are set, final pricing is driven largely by broker models and advice. Pure price-taking is a compromise in any market. It simplifies the process but limits the breadth of ways that buyers and sellers can come to terms.

Tremor Technologies, Inc., the leading online reinsurance pricing and placing platform, is pleased to announce that the company has launched its Reinsurer Product Council with its first cohort of eight global reinsurance companies and ILS funds participating representing nearly $100B in industry capital. Participating companies include a cross section of major US, Bermudian and European reinsurers as well as alternative capital providers. “Tremor is on a mission to create a transparent, price and cost efficient reinsurance marketplace that benefits everyone.

Tremor was an invited panelist at Trading Risk New York 2022 - ILS (Re)silience: a New Horizon conference. We enjoyed participating on our panel, “Insuring the technology leap: can risk transfer keep up?” We discussed how Tremor’s unique market technology offers comprehensive and transparent price discovery that satisfies everyone’s requirements at the same time, why that’s important and how it is very different from the traditional intermediated market. We also discussed our view on how efficient markets can both mitigate hard/soft market cycles and how efficient markets can help close the protection gap using technology as well as how the broker role will evolve into managing bidding technologies to integrate into Tremor to secure best execution for their clients.

Have you ever wanted to explore Tremor or see what the experience is like for the other side of a transaction? We’re excited to announce self-driven demos that let you go hands-on with Tremor and simulate transactions. Our self-driven demos let you step through a Panorama transaction as either a cedent or a reinsurer. You can use them to practice, to see how specific features work, and even to experience Tremor from the other side of the transaction.

Panorama dramatically speeds up the placement of reinsurance. Consider the following statistics from Tremor’s placements: Reinsurers who participated on Tremor learned their final lines within three business days of submitting their authorizations. Cedents who placed with Tremor finalized coverage in five business days from the time Tremor started collecting authorizations, without having to invest time to set firm order pricing. By comparison, a traditional firm order terms (FOT) process often takes more than a month to resolve the same issues.

Concurrency is central to the “firmness” of a traditional firm order terms (FOT) process, yet it leaves cedents and reinsurers alike thinking they see opportunities left on the table. In reality, these opportunities are a mirage – without concurrency they disappear, leaving in their place an expensive process that struggles to match the performance of concurrent terms. So why do cedents see opportunities, and why do those opportunities disappear? We will see that the answer, witnessed in analogous markets across a wide variety of industries, lies in game theory – for a reinsurer, to be paid far below the rest of the market is leaves money on the table risks undermining their own portfolio; when cedents relax concurrency, reinsurers who would otherwise have been competitive typically protect themselves by offering less-favorable terms than they would be willing to accept as concurrent FOT.

Tremor’s supply curves and market clearing technology give reinsurers more control over their final lines. As a reinsurer, as soon as a renewal lands on your desk you typically know what you want. Unfortunately, the road to your final line is long. The cedent’s firm order terms – if they are even set when the submission first arrives – will be extrapolated from models and selected reinsurer input. Invariably, these extrapolated prices will be imperfect, and finalizing the placement will require sign-downs or other adjustments.

Insurance companies worry about finding reinsurance that works for their businesses. In today’s hard market this concern is palpable. Without clear information about what the market will bear, we see many cedents tightening their reinsurance buys, limiting the options that they consider, and driving hard on the cost of what they do buy. Through all this, opportunity is lost. Variations that might be profitable for cedent and reinsurer alike are never explored.

Tremor Technologies, Inc. Founder & CEO Sean Bourgeois participated in a fireside chat today during the Jefferies Insurtech Conference to discuss alternative re/insurance distribution with insurtech pioneer Jennifer Fitzgerald, co-founder & CEO of Policygenius and Yaron Kinar of Jefferies investment bank. The conversation covered a wide range of topics including a review of the core business models of each company, which product lines each company distributes and each company’s view on the value in the insurance ecosystem being weighted to distribution.