Automated Treaty Review in Reinsurance: Using AI to Analyze Facultative and Treaty Reinsurance Contracts in Minutes — Treaty Underwriter

Treaty underwriters live on deadlines. At 1/1, 4/1, and 7/1 renewal peaks, brokered submissions land as sprawling PDFs combining slip policies, cover notes, treaty wordings, endorsements, and competing versions that change daily. Hidden inside those documents are the details that make or break profitability—definitions of occurrence, hours clauses, exclusions, reinstatements, commissions, and cash call mechanics. Miss one nuance, and an otherwise profitable program can become a source of disputes, leakage, or adverse capital allocation. That is the challenge—and it’s exactly what Nomad Data’s Doc Chat solves.

Doc Chat by Nomad Data is a suite of purpose-built, AI-powered agents for insurance and reinsurance document intelligence. For treaty underwriters, reinsurance analysts, and contract managers, Doc Chat ingests entire reinsurance submissions—Facultative Reinsurance Agreements, Proportional Reinsurance Treaties (quota share and surplus), Excess of Loss Treaties (per risk, catastrophe, aggregate), Slip Policies, Cover Notes—and instantly extracts, summarizes, and cross-compares coverage terms, exclusions, limits, and subjectivities across all versions and layers. Ask a question in plain English—“List all terrorism exclusions across all layers and highlight differences from last year’s wording,” or “Summarize follow-the-settlements and claims control language across the program”—and get precise, citation-backed answers in seconds.

The Reinsurance Treaty Underwriter’s Dilemma: Volume, Velocity, and Nuance

Reinsurance underwriting demands high-speed comprehension of dense, inconsistent documentation. Broker submissions rarely present information in a single, structured place. A program’s terms and conditions are scattered across the slip, cover note, master wording, LMA/NMA/LSW clause schedules, versions of special acceptances, and subsequent endorsements. In facultative placements, risks arrive with bespoke clauses tailored to a single account, while treaty placements often include nuanced differences at the layer, territory, and peril level. The result: treaty underwriters must reconcile multiple “sources of truth” while racing toward quote deadlines.

Critical treaty and facultative provisions hide in plain sight. The definition of ultimate net loss, the hours clause for windstorm and earthquake, follow-the-fortunes vs. follow-the-settlements, claims cooperation vs. claims control, franchise vs. deductible, inuring reinsurance, cut-through endorsements, cash call and funding provisions, sanctions and OFAC wording, service of suit, arbitration venue, reinstatement mechanics (paid vs. free, pro rata vs. 100%), occurrence definitions, notice and reporting requirements, bordereaux obligations, catastrophe aggregate and clash language—all of these can differ subtly across documents and layers. When proportional treaties add sliding-scale commission, loss corridors, brokerage, taxes, loss participation or profit commission, the complexity compounds further.

Treaty underwriters must also validate alignment with appetite and retro strategy: Are perils and territories aligned to risk appetite? Do exclusions harmonize with retro cessions? Does a cat XoL treaty’s hours clause match the retro’s? Are subjectivities resolved before binding and reproduced verbatim in final signed lines? These questions demand a level of speed and precision that manual methods can’t reliably deliver at scale—particularly during peak renewal crunches.

How the Process Is Handled Manually Today

Despite modern pressures, the typical review process relies on human reading and comparison across static PDFs and emails. Treaty underwriters, reinsurance analysts, and contract managers frequently:

- Download and save multiple PDFs (slips, cover notes, draft wordings, endorsements) as versions change.
- Skim for key clauses, highlighting and annotating pages to build ad hoc checklists in Excel or Word.
- Copy and paste key terms—limits, attachments, aggregates, hours, exclusions—into comparison matrices for internal review.
- Re-open old renewals to see “what changed,” often missing buried edits introduced via broker mark-ups or clause renumbering.
- Ask colleagues to sanity-check that the facultative agreement’s cut-through or claims control clause matches the coverage intent.
- Re-key extracted elements into treaty administration or exposure systems and pricing models.

Even for experienced treaty underwriters, manual review is time-consuming, cognitively exhausting, and susceptible to error. The smallest tweak—changing “will” to “may,” renaming a clause, or moving an exclusion from the schedule to the body—can flip exposure, ambiguity, or reporting burdens. With multiple competing slips and cover notes circulating in quick succession, it’s easy to miss the latest broker “scratch,” signing changes, or endorsements affecting a single layer. Manual comparison simply can’t keep pace with the volume and velocity of today’s reinsurance deal flow.

AI for Reviewing Reinsurance Treaties PDF: Turning Unstructured Files into Structured Insight

Doc Chat treats every reinsurance submission as a searchable, comparable knowledge set—no matter how long or inconsistent the PDFs. Purpose-built for complex insurance and reinsurance documents, Doc Chat ingests entire claim files and contract libraries—thousands of pages at a time—and delivers precise, real-time answers with page-level citations. For treaty underwriters, that means instant answers about any clause, definition, or schedule across all versions of Proportional Reinsurance Treaties, Excess of Loss Treaties, Slip Policies, Cover Notes, and Facultative Reinsurance Agreements.

Ask once; verify instantly. Doc Chat’s real-time Q&A returns not just the answer but a direct link to the source page. That’s how treaty underwriters build trust quickly—speed paired with auditability.

Automate Treaty Slip Comparison in Reinsurance: Version Control Without the Busywork

Competing or evolving treaty slips are common during placement. Doc Chat automatically detects differences across versions and layers, highlighting additions, deletions, and changes in wording or clause numbering—even when brokers reorganize clauses or embed changes in addenda. Treaty underwriters can run a compliance preset against internal playbooks—“Flag any variance from our standard hours clause for cat XoL” or “Highlight exclusions materially different from our 2024 appetite”—and get an exception report in seconds. This is the practical answer to the search query “automate treaty slip comparison in reinsurance.”

What Doc Chat Extracts and Cross-Compares from Treaties and Facultative Agreements

Doc Chat is engineered to surface every reference to coverage, liability, and operational obligations. It reads like a reinsurance specialist trained on your exact playbooks. For treaty underwriters reviewing Facultative Reinsurance Agreements, Proportional Reinsurance Treaties, Excess of Loss Treaties, Slip Policies, and Cover Notes, Doc Chat can extract and compare:

• Program structure and participants: cedent, broker, leader, following markets, signed lines, order, layers
• Scope of coverage: peril, line of business, territory, coverage basis (claims-made vs. occurrence), inuring reinsurance
• Limits and attachments: per risk, per event, per occurrence, aggregate limits, annual aggregates, sublimits
• Reinstatements: count, pricing (pro rata vs. 100%), paid vs. free, conditionality
• Hours clause and definitions: 72/96/168/504 hours for various perils; interruption rules; aggregation mechanics; definition of “occurrence”
• Exclusions and carve-backs: war/terrorism, nuclear/chemical/biological, sanctions/OFAC, communicable disease, cyber, strike/riot, attritional loss caps, event definitions
• Follow obligations: follow-the-fortunes vs. follow-the-settlements; claims control/cooperation; notice of loss; reporting cadence; access to records
• Ultimate net loss (UNL): definitions, salvage/subrogation, expense treatment, claims handling costs, ex gratia treatment
• Funding and liquidity: cash call, cut-through, trust/LOC, collateral, funding triggers and timelines
• Proportional specifics: ceding commission (fixed/sliding scale), loss corridors, loss participation, profit commission, brokerage, taxes
• Governance: arbitration, governing law, service of suit, severability, errors & omissions
• Operational obligations: bordereaux structure and fields, coding standards, reporting timelines, audit rights

Because Doc Chat builds structured outputs from unstructured text, treaty underwriters can export comparisons directly into pricing templates, exposure models, or treaty administration systems—eliminating re-keying and reducing error.

Facultative Agreement Clause Extraction AI: Higher-Fidelity Reviews at Facultative Speed

Fac submissions are diverse and uniquely worded by design. Searching “facultative agreement clause extraction AI” points you to the exact Doc Chat capability: rapid, bespoke clause extraction. Doc Chat recognizes custom definitions and endorsements, detects references embedded in schedules, and compares proposed fac terms against your standard positions. It can also reconcile a fac agreement with the underlying policy wording, highlighting gaps or mismatches that could lead to disputes—for example, claims control in the fac wording that conflicts with the primary policy’s claims cooperation structure.

How Doc Chat Automates the Treaty Review Workflow End to End

Nomad Data’s reinsurance automation approach is designed around your process, not a generic template. Here’s how Doc Chat transforms treaty underwriting and contract management:

1) Intake and classification: Drag and drop entire submissions—slips, cover notes, treaty wordings, endorsements, addenda, clause libraries, broker emails—into Doc Chat. The system classifies and indexes each item by document type and version automatically.

2) Purpose-built extraction: Using your playbooks, Doc Chat extracts the exact fields treaty underwriters care about: attachment, limit, reinstatements, exclusions, aggregates, follow obligations, definitions (UNL, occurrence), sanctions, cash call mechanics, and more. The output is standardized to your format.

3) Cross-document comparison: Doc Chat compares terms across versions, layers, years, or competing placements. It highlights changes and summarizes their practical impact—e.g., “The new exclusion eliminates cyber carve-back previously allowed in 2024,” or “Hours clause reduced from 168 to 96 hours for EQ.”

4) Real-time Q&A with citations: Ask “Summarize all sanctions language across the program” or “List any LMA/NMA clauses incorporated by reference but not attached” and receive answers with page-level citations for instant verification.

5) Policy and exposure alignment: Doc Chat flags misalignments between treaty and retro, or between facultative and underlying policy. It surfaces potential aggregation conflicts in hours clauses and inconsistent definitions of occurrence that could impair recovery.

6) Structured export and workflow: Publish results to Excel/CSV, your treaty administration system, exposure models, or internal deal sheets. Doc Chat can generate a renewal change log, a contract check report, and a “red flag” list for legal review.

Beyond Documents: Connecting Treaty Terms to Data and Risk

Reinsurance decisions depend on data beyond the contract itself. Treaty underwriters routinely review loss run reports, claims bordereaux, pricing exhibits, and catastrophe studies to understand performance and shape pricing and structure. Doc Chat cross-references treaty terms with submitted data, for example:

- Linking loss corridors or loss participation provisions to recent incurred development trends.
- Highlighting whether a sliding-scale commission’s parameters would have produced materially different results on historical years.
- Checking that hours clause assumptions match the catastrophe model view of risk aggregation.
- Confirming reporting obligations align with the cedent’s historical bordereaux quality and cadence.

Because Doc Chat is built for end-to-end document intelligence, it helps treaty underwriters translate wording nuances into risk, cash flow, and operational implications—without manual detective work.

The Business Impact: Faster Quotes, Fewer Disputes, Lower Leakage

Nomad Data’s Doc Chat routinely shifts treaty contract review from hours or days to minutes. That speed matters most when treaty underwriters face compressed broker timelines and need to iterate on multiple structures. But speed is only part of the story. The other benefits include:

• Consistency and completeness: Every treaty and fac file is read the same way, every time—no fatigue, no blind spots. Doc Chat surfaces every reference to coverage, liability, or damages, and it never misses a clause moved to an annex or schedule.
• Reduced leakage and disputes: Early detection of ambiguous or adverse wording limits downstream arguments and arbitration risk. Aligning hours, occurrence definitions, and UNL treatment across program and retro minimizes recovery friction.
• Lower operating cost: Treaty underwriters and analysts spend less time on rote extraction and more time on pricing, structuring, and negotiation—work that drives margin.
• Scalability during peaks: Doc Chat ingests entire libraries across markets and layers, scaling instantly at 1/1 without adding headcount or overtime.
• Audit-ready traceability: Page-level citations, change logs, and standardized exports satisfy internal governance, reinsurer committees, and regulatory scrutiny.

For context on how similar capabilities transformed claims operations, see our customer story on Great American Insurance Group’s results with Nomad’s AI in complex claims reviews: Reimagining Insurance Claims Management. The same AI backbone that can summarize a 10,000-page medical file in minutes is what powers accelerated treaty analysis.

Why Nomad Data Is the Best Choice for Treaty Underwriters

Reinsurance contract analysis sits at the high end of document complexity. Clauses often embed firm-specific rules, and many of the “real” rules live only in expert heads. That’s why Nomad Data built a different kind of partnership model for Doc Chat—one that captures your unwritten underwriting standards and encodes them into reliable, repeatable processes.

- The Nomad Process: We train Doc Chat on your playbooks, clause preferences, and exception thresholds—precisely how your treaty underwriters want wordings flagged and summarized.

- Volume and complexity: Doc Chat ingests thousands of pages per file and tracks subtle differences across versions, clause renumbering, and annexes—tasks even seasoned analysts find arduous at renewal peaks.

- Real-time Q&A with citations: Treaty underwriters trust Doc Chat because every answer links back to the source page. Question-driven workflows turn contract review into direct, defensible insight.

- White glove onboarding: You’re not buying a toolkit; you’re partnering with a team that co-designs the outputs, fields, and exception rules you require.

- 1–2 week implementation: Start with drag-and-drop, then move to deeper integration with deal sheets, treaty administration, and data warehouses. Nomad’s modern APIs keep timelines short.

Security, Governance, and Defensibility

Reinsurance documents contain sensitive information. Nomad Data maintains rigorous security practices, including SOC 2 Type 2 controls, and supports strict data residency and access governance. Doc Chat provides document-level traceability for every answer it generates—preserving the audit trail that treaty underwriters, legal teams, and compliance leaders expect.

Concerned about reliability? Doc Chat is designed to answer from your provided materials. It cites source pages for verification and can be configured to return “not found” rather than infer when a clause isn’t explicitly present. The result is trustworthy, auditable output that stands up to internal and external review.

From “Extraction” to “Inference”: Why Treaty Work Needs More Than OCR

Treaty analysis is not web scraping for PDFs. It’s inference across scattered, evolving references. The difference matters. If you’ve been told that “OCR plus search” solves reinsurance contract complexity, read our perspective on this crucial distinction: Beyond Extraction: Why Document Scraping Isn’t Just Web Scraping for PDFs. Treaty underwriters don’t just need to find words; they need a system that understands how those words interact to create risk, obligations, and cash flows.

How Doc Chat Maps to High-Intent Needs

AI for Reviewing Reinsurance Treaties PDF

Doc Chat ingests entire Proportional Reinsurance Treaties, Excess of Loss Treaties, Slip Policies, and Cover Notes, returning immediate answers with citations. Whether you are validating a catastrophe XoL hours clause or confirming a quota share’s sliding-scale commission banding, the system pinpoints language across versions and outputs a structured comparison.

Automate Treaty Slip Comparison in Reinsurance

Upload competing broker slips and let Doc Chat generate a redline-like comparison: additions, deletions, clause moves, and plain-language “what changed” summaries, along with a risk-impact interpretation aligned to your playbooks.

Extract Exclusions from Reinsurance Contract

In seconds, Doc Chat produces a consolidated list of exclusions—war/terrorism, NCBR, infectious disease, cyber, SRCC, sanctions—with context on carve-backs and where exceptions exist by layer or territory. It will also detect when exclusions are incorporated by reference (LMA/NMA/LSW) but not attached.

Facultative Agreement Clause Extraction AI

For fac placements, Doc Chat identifies custom clauses, verifies alignment to your fac standards, and highlights any inconsistency with the underlying policy or treaty retro. It’s bespoke clause extraction at the speed of trading.

Where Doc Chat Fits in the Reinsurance Tech Stack

Doc Chat complements, not replaces, core systems. Treaty underwriters can start with drag-and-drop reviews. As adoption grows, Nomad integrates with:

- Treaty administration systems for structured field updates (limits, attachments, reinstatements, exclusions).
- Pricing workbooks and exposure models to broadcast extracted terms and drive parameter consistency.
- Data warehouses and BI for portfolio-level analytics on wording exposure (e.g., sanctions carve-backs by region, hours clause distribution across cat treaties).
- Document repositories (SharePoint, Box, S3) for automated ingestion and version control.

What Makes Our Results So Fast and Accurate

Doc Chat marries large language models with domain-specific instructions and your house standards. It’s not generic summarization. It’s deep contract understanding tuned to reinsurance. To explore how these principles drive value across insurance use cases—underwriting, compliance monitoring, claims, litigation—see AI for Insurance: Real-World AI Use Cases Driving Transformation.

A Day-in-the-Life: Treaty Underwriter Using Doc Chat

It’s late November. A broker sends three versions of the layer 2 slip, two competing master wordings, and a cover note with subjectivities. Using Doc Chat, the treaty underwriter:

1) Uploads all PDFs.
2) Runs the “XoL catastrophe” preset: extract limits, attachments, reinstatements, hours clause, exclusions, UNL, follow obligations, sanctions, cash call, and arbitration/governing law.
3) Executes a side-by-side comparison: Doc Chat shows the hours clause shortened from 168 to 96 hours in the latest slip and points out that cyber carve-back was removed in a new LMA reference.
4) Asks, “Has the UNL definition changed vs. last year?” Doc Chat answers, “Yes; expense treatment now excludes LAE above $X unless approved,” with citation links.
5) Exports a one-page exception memo and a structured CSV to the pricing template.
6) Sends a question to the broker supported by captured citations, speeding negotiation.

Result: errors avoided, quote delivered, and a cleaner path to binding because subjectivities and misalignments were identified on day one—not after signing.

Implementation in 1–2 Weeks: Start Simple, Scale Fast

Nomad’s implementation model is intentionally lightweight for treaty teams:

- Week 1: Share example treaty and fac files, your clause playbooks, and desired outputs (comparison view, exception list, export schema). We configure Doc Chat presets to mirror your process.
- Week 2: Live with drag-and-drop. Treaty underwriters pilot on real renewals. Nomad tunes results from your feedback. Optional API connections to repositories and deal sheets are enabled as needed.

Because Doc Chat works without heavy IT lift, treaty underwriters see immediate productivity within days—then deepen automation over time. That “value on day one” approach is why our clients routinely expand use from treaty underwriting into contracts, legal review, and operations.

White Glove Service: A Partner, Not Just a Platform

Reinsurance is a relationship business. We reflect that in our service. Nomad’s specialists interview your treaty underwriters and contract managers to capture the unwritten judgment that drives your decisions. We encode that knowledge into Doc Chat presets so the system behaves like a team member trained to your standards. As your appetite evolves, we iterate together.

Nomad also reinforces adoption with training, office-hours support, and change management guidance—ensuring treaty underwriters, analysts, and contract managers gain confidence rapidly and apply Doc Chat where it moves the needle most.

Quantifying the Gains: Time, Cost, Accuracy, and Confidence

Across insurance organizations, Doc Chat moves reviews from days to minutes and eliminates re-keying. For treaty underwriting, typical outcomes include:

- Time savings: 5–10 hours per file reduced to minutes for extraction and comparison; layers processed in parallel during peak season.
- Cost reduction: Less reliance on external wording counsel for mechanical review; internal teams focus on negotiations and structure.
- Accuracy and completeness: Doc Chat reads page 1 and page 1,500 with equal focus, surfacing every relevant clause and difference—no fatigue, no skipped annexes.
- Defensibility: Page-level citations and change logs create a transparent audit trail for committees, reinsurers, and regulators.

If you have ever wished that your renewal matrix could build itself—accurately, consistently, and with citations—Doc Chat delivers that reality.

Common Questions from Treaty Underwriters

Can Doc Chat handle bespoke clauses? Yes. We train on your clause library and broker variations. If a clause is referenced by code (e.g., an LMA number) or incorporated by reference, Doc Chat flags and links it.

What about endorsements and post-bind changes? Doc Chat tracks endorsements across time and produces a change log that explains what changed and the downstream implication—layer by layer.

Does it integrate with our systems? Yes. Start with drag-and-drop, then connect to treaty admin, exposure models, and repositories via API. Many clients see value before integrations are complete.

How do you handle data security? Nomad Data maintains SOC 2 Type 2 controls, strict access governance, and will not use your data to train foundation models without explicit consent.

Will AI “hallucinate” clauses that aren’t there? Doc Chat is tuned to answer from your documents and returns “not found” when appropriate, with an emphasis on citation-backed responses to build trust.

From Manual to Modern: The Strategic Advantage

Competitors who automate treaty slip comparison and wording analysis will quote faster, negotiate with more confidence, and avoid the small mistakes that become large disputes. They’ll standardize what used to live only in veteran heads—capturing institutional knowledge and making it teachable. They’ll scale at renewal without burning out their teams. In other words, they’ll operate like the best-run treaty shops, every day of the year.

Get Started

Bring one live submission—say, a cat XoL renewal with two slip versions, a cover note, and a clause schedule. In under an hour, we’ll show Doc Chat extract key terms, “extract exclusions from reinsurance contract,” compare versions, and produce an exception memo ready for your internal committee. From there, you’ll understand exactly how this fits your 1/1 plan.

Learn more or request a tailored demonstration of Doc Chat for reinsurance: Doc Chat for Insurance.