Streamlining Reinsurance Bordereau Validation for International Books - International Portfolio Manager

Streamlining Reinsurance Bordereau Validation for International Books

International Portfolio Managers live in a world of constant motion: monthly bordereaux arriving from dozens of cedents, each with their own formats, languages, currencies, peril codes, and underwriting nuances. The bottleneck is real. Every cycle, teams must review, extract, and validate premium and claims bordereau schedules and reconcile them back to global treaty documentation—all while maintaining accurate accumulations and delivering near real-time insights to underwriting, actuarial, cat risk, and finance. Nomad Data’s Doc Chat removes this bottleneck by automating end-to-end bordereau intake and validation for global reinsurance portfolios, so your teams can focus on strategy, not spreadsheets.

Doc Chat by Nomad Data is a suite of AI-powered document agents built for insurance and reinsurance. It ingests entire files—multi-tab Excel bordereau, PDFs, zip folders, scanned statements, email attachments—in any language, normalizes content to your canonical schema, cross-checks entries against treaty terms and endorsements, and returns validated outputs with page-level citations. With Doc Chat for Insurance, International Portfolio Managers can finally automate reinsurance bordereau validation without growing headcount or sacrificing quality.

Why Bordereau Validation Is a Strategic Bottleneck for International Portfolio Managers

In a global Property & Homeowners reinsurance book, a single month can bring hundreds of files: premium and claims bordereaux, statements of account (SOA), schedules of values (SOV), notice of loss (NOL) packets, loss run reports, treaty slips and endorsements, and CAT event summaries. Files come from cedents across EMEA, APAC, and the Americas, and include multiple currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, JPY), mixed metrics (square meters vs square feet), diverse peril taxonomies (windstorm, hail, bushfire, flood, quake), and varied location encodings (CRESTA zones, postal codes, latitude/longitude). Manual review is slow and error-prone, and small inconsistencies create big downstream problems: incorrect accumulations, misapplied deductibles, and delayed settlements.

For the International Portfolio Manager, the operational reality is even more nuanced:

Multi-language variance: Bordereau from Spain, France, Germany, Japan, and Brazil will use different column names, abbreviations, decimal separators, and peril codes. Core fields like TIV, deductible, and occupancy are often buried under local terminology.
Inconsistent structures: Some cedents send a master file with premium and claims tabs; others split files across months or lines of business, or include PDFs for endorsements and cover notes that override table data.
Complex coverage constructs: Quota share and surplus share treaties with sliding scale commissions, variable cession percentages, taxes and levies, profit commission, hours clauses (e.g., 72-hour hurricane), and per-risk vs per-occurrence deductibles—all of which must be validated against the data presented.
Regulatory timelines: Solvency II, IFRS 17, and RBC reporting windows demand faster, cleaner data. Late or incorrect bordereau validation carries financial and regulatory risk.
Aggregation and cat exposure: Accumulations need right-now accuracy for cat modeling and RDS reporting. A single miscoded CRESTA or missing geocode can meaningfully underestimate accumulation risk.

Against this backdrop, teams still cobble together scripts, VLOOKUPs, and visual checks—workflows that do not scale with portfolio growth, cedent onboarding, or cat event surges.

How the Process Is Handled Manually Today

Most reinsurance operations rely on a patchwork of spreadsheets, manual checks, and tribal knowledge to get through monthly bordereau validation. The typical sequence looks like this:

1) Intake and triage
Analysts retrieve emails, SFTP drops, and portal uploads. Files arrive as Excel, CSV, PDF, or zip archives. They identify which line of business, treaty, and period each file belongs to, then log the file against internal trackers.

2) Format normalization
In Excel, analysts rename headers, copy-paste columns, and align fields to a canonical schema (policy number, risk location, CRESTA, occupancy, construction, TIV, deductible, attachment point, cession %, net written premium, brokerage, taxes/levies, claim number, date of loss, cause of loss, paid-to-date, case reserve, LAE). If the cedent shifted formats or languages, they rebuild mapping logic from scratch.

3) Treaty rules cross-check
They pull the treaty wording, addenda, cover notes, and endorsements (sometimes dozens of pages). They confirm sublimits, exclusions (e.g., flood-in or flood-out, brushfire), occurrence vs. aggregate caps, hours clauses, and event coding rules. Then they manually test whether reported items adhere to the contract.

4) Data validation and reconciliation
Teams run spot checks and custom macros. They reconcile premium movements to the SOA, compare claim triangles and loss runs to prior periods, and verify currency conversions versus accounting-date FX rates. They check whether paid and case reserves roll forward correctly and whether recoveries, salvage, and subrogation are correctly netted.

5) Exception handling
Analysts email cedents for clarifications: missing CRESTA codes, inconsistent perils, mismatched policy counts, unexpected deductibles, or duplicated claim rows. This ping-pong can take days, stalling portfolio reporting and accumulations.

6) Downstream publication
Validated data is loaded into data warehouses or passed to cat modeling teams, portfolio steering, actuarial reserving, and finance. Any late-breaking corrections repeat the cycle.

While seasoned analysts become incredibly resourceful, the approach is brittle. One missing header or unexpected delimiter can break the workflow. Weekend storm events and sudden cedent backlogs push teams into overtime. Human fatigue increases the risk of leakage, particularly when a 10,000-row bordereau hides an endorsement that flips the deductible structure mid-term.

Automating the Pain Away: How Doc Chat Handles Bordereaux End-to-End

Doc Chat operationalizes the exact tasks that weigh down bordereau teams—at portfolio scale. It is purpose-built to AI process international bordereau files regardless of language, layout, or attachment format, and to cross-check every entry against treaty language and internal standards.

1) Universal ingestion, classification, and OCR
Drag-and-drop or pipe files via SFTP/API. Doc Chat ingests Excel, CSV, PDF, scanned SOA, zip folders, and email bundles. It detects and classifies document types (reinsurance bordereau, premium & claims schedules, global treaty documentation, SOA, endorsements, cover notes), then routes them into the right validation preset for the treaty and line of business.

2) Schema mapping and localization
Using multilingual NLP, Doc Chat maps Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and English headers to your canonical schema—even when cedents rename fields or change order. Decimal and thousands separators are normalized; dates are standardized. If a cedent swaps “riesgo” for “risk” or “Summe” for “sum insured,” Doc Chat still finds it.

3) Treaty-aware validation
Doc Chat reads the treaty wording, slips, and endorsements alongside the data. It verifies cession percentages, attachment points, occurrence and aggregate caps, and hours clauses, then checks whether each reported record adheres to the contract. If an endorsement moves flood from excluded to included mid-term, Doc Chat applies this logic to the right policy period and claims.

4) Exposure and claims logic
The agent validates CRESTA codes, geocoding, occupancy, construction class, and TIV ranges against expected thresholds. On claims, it checks cause of loss, event coding, paid/case roll-forward, LAE, salvage/subrogation, and duplication. It flags potential event misclassification (e.g., storm vs. convective wind) and incorrect deductible applications.

5) Currency and finance checks
Premium taxes, levies, brokerage, and profit commission are recalculated to verify cedent math. FX conversions roll off the right accounting or settlement date. Differences are itemized with supporting citations.

6) Exception surfacing with page-level evidence
Every exception includes the precise cell or page reference and a short rationale. Analysts can click through to review the source (e.g., endorsement paragraph, SOA line item) without hunting through PDFs.

7) Real-time Q&A
Ask, “List all policies with flood exposures in CRESTA 4B with TIV > $5M and deductibles < $25k,” or “Which claims in the Q2 bordereau tie to PCS event 42?” Doc Chat answers instantly across massive document sets, surfacing the context and source pages.

8) Clean outputs for downstream systems
Doc Chat exports validated, normalized tables to your data warehouse, modeling teams, or BI dashboards. It maintains audit trails for Solvency II and IFRS 17 reviews, making audits defensible and efficient.

Example: Extract Data from Multi-Country Bordereau in Minutes

Imagine your team receives the following in a single week:

A Spanish homeowners premium bordereau (Excel) with tabs for policy, endorsements, and taxes & levies
A Japanese claims bordereau (CSV) plus a PDF notice of loss packet and scanned medical invoices
A Brazilian SOA (PDF) referencing policy-level adjustments not reflected in the latest bordereau
A global treaty endorsement (PDF) altering windstorm inclusion from July 1st onward

With Doc Chat, you load all four. The agent auto-detects document types, maps Spanish/Japanese columns to your schema, extracts and OCRs the Brazilian SOA to reconcile premium movements, and reads the endorsement to adjust validations effective July 1st. It outputs a single, clean premium table and a claims table, highlights discrepancies (missing CRESTA codes, duplicate claim numbers, unexpected sublimits), reconciles to the SOA, and provides a one-click exception report for the cedent. This is what it means to extract data from multi-country bordereau without adding headcount or sacrificing oversight.

The Nuances That Matter in International Property & Homeowners

International reinsurance data contains complexities that generic automation misses. Doc Chat was built for the details that drive your loss ratio:

Peril and event coding. From PCS to local regulators’ event IDs, the mapping is rarely consistent. Doc Chat checks for inconsistent peril tags and misapplied event codes that could distort cat aggregations.

Location precision. A postal code-level entry in the U.K. and a municipality-level entry in Brazil are not equivalent for accumulation purposes. Doc Chat flags low-precision geocodes and prompts for additional detail.

Deductible integrity. In homeowners, deductibles vary by peril (wind vs. non-wind) and sometimes by construction class or occupancy. Doc Chat verifies whether deductibles align with treaty language and the specific risk attributes in each row.

Commission and levies. Sliding-scale commissions, brokerage, and local taxes must reconcile to SOA and treaty. Doc Chat recalculates and highlights differences to ensure financial accuracy.

Endorsements that change the rules mid-term. Exposure or coverage changes on July 1 should only affect records after that date. Doc Chat applies time-aware logic so you don’t over- or under-cede.

Business Impact: Time, Cost, and Accuracy at Portfolio Scale

Doc Chat’s impact compounds across your entire global portfolio:

Time savings. Reinsurance teams report moving bordereau review from days to minutes per file. By ingesting thousands of pages and rows at once, Doc Chat removes the monthly validation queue that stalls accumulation and reporting.

Cost reduction. High-cost manual checks, overtime, and urgent contractor spend drop significantly. Analysts shift from data wrangling to high-value investigation and portfolio steering.

Accuracy improvements. Machines don’t tire. Doc Chat applies the same rigor to row 1 and row 50,000, consistently catching misapplied deductibles, incorrect event coding, and commission miscalculations—reducing leakage and dispute risk.

Scalability and resilience. Storm seasons and cat clusters no longer cripple the team. Doc Chat scales instantly to handle surge volumes without added headcount.

Better decisions, faster. With validated data in days (not weeks), International Portfolio Managers can adjust aggregate limits, buy or optimize retrocession, rebalance territories, and steer underwriting while it still matters.

From Manual to Autonomous: A Side-by-Side View

Manual today: Analysts download files, interpret headers, copy-paste into a template, run a patchwork of macros, read treaty wordings, test samples, reconcile to the SOA, email queries to cedents, and produce an exception log. Cycle repeats with late-breaking files.

With Doc Chat: Files arrive via SFTP/API. The agent classifies, maps, validates against treaty and endorsement logic, recalculates commissions and FX, reconciles to SOA, and exports validated outputs with a ready-to-send exception report—plus citations for each flagged issue.

Purpose-Built Capabilities that International Portfolio Managers Need

Doc Chat reflects lessons learned from high-volume, high-complexity insurance operations. It’s not generic summarization—it institutionalizes your process and standards:

Volume at speed: Ingest entire claim files and tabular bordereau (thousands of pages/rows) without manual triage.
Complexity under control: Detect exclusions, endorsements, and subtle trigger language hiding in dense treaty documentation.
The Nomad Process: We train Doc Chat on your playbooks, validation rules, and canonical schema to deliver a solution tailored to your workflows.
Real-time Q&A: Ask natural-language questions across all documents and get instant answers with citations. No more scrolling.
Thorough and complete: Surface every relevant reference to coverage, limits, commissions, and reported losses—no blind spots.
Your partner in AI: White glove onboarding, rapid iteration, and continuous improvement with your SMEs.

Why Now: From “Data Entry” to Decision Intelligence

The most powerful AI wins in insurance aren’t flashy—they’re found in eliminating the grind of rekeying and reconciling unstructured data. As we discuss in AI’s Untapped Goldmine: Automating Data Entry, the ROI on intelligent document processing is immediate and compounding. For reinsurance, the step-change comes from codifying unwritten rules—the gray-area logic humans apply every month. Our perspective on this discipline is captured in Beyond Extraction: Why Document Scraping Isn’t Just Web Scraping for PDFs. Bordereau validation is not simply reading cells; it’s making cross-document inferences that blend treaty language, endorsements, event coding, and finance.

Security, Auditability, and Regulatory Confidence

Reinsurance portfolios carry strict obligations around data governance. Doc Chat is designed for enterprise-grade security (SOC 2 Type II) and defensibility. Every output maintains a clear, document-level trail that shows exactly where each value or rule application came from—supporting internal audits, reinsurer partners, external regulators, and IFRS 17/Solvency II reviewers.

Moreover, page/cell-level citations foster trust. Oversight teams can track any validation decision back to the source treaty clause or SOA line without hunting. This transparent audit trail is a must-have for global reinsurance programs.

Implementation: White Glove, Fast Results (1–2 Weeks)

We do the heavy lifting so your team doesn’t have to. In most cases, Doc Chat can be configured and delivering value in 1–2 weeks:

Week 1: We collect sample bordereau files (in multiple languages), treaty wordings and endorsements, SOA examples, and your canonical schema. In joint working sessions, your International Portfolio Manager and operations leads walk us through today’s validation rules, exception categories, and escalation paths.

Week 2: We configure presets, validation logic, and outputs; connect SFTP/API; and run test cycles on historical files. We iterate with your SMEs until exception rates and output formats match your standards. Then we go live and begin handling the monthly cycle.

Integration is optional on day one. Many clients start by dragging and dropping a representative set of bordereaux for immediate impact, then plug Doc Chat into their data warehouse and workflow tools once trust is established.

How Doc Chat Compares—and Why Nomad Data Is the Best Choice

Generic document tools fail in reinsurance because they assume the answer is always sitting clearly on a page. In bordereau validation, the answer often emerges from how multiple documents fit together. Our approach—validated by complex claims customers like GAIG in this webinar replay—is to pair speed with explainability. Nomad Data builds solutions that mirror your process, not force your process into a generic product.

Why Nomad:

Insurance-native agents: Designed for claims, coverage, policy, and treaty documents—capable of reconciling tables to narrative clauses.
Custom to your playbooks: Our white glove team encodes your rulebooks and judgment calls into Doc Chat so new analysts perform like seasoned pros.
Rapid, reliable delivery: 1–2 week implementation means you see impact this quarter, not next year.
Explainable outputs: Every anomaly, exception, and transformation is traceable and defensible.
Scale without friction: Handle surge volumes, event spikes, and added cedents with no added headcount.

Advanced Use Cases for International Reinsurance Teams

Once your monthly cycles run smoothly, Doc Chat opens up new opportunities:

Retrocession support. Create cleaner, faster data packages for retro brokers and reinsurers. Doc Chat can segment, validate, and summarize ceded portions with clean references to treaties and endorsements.

Portfolio drift monitoring. Identify unwanted exposures creeping into the book (e.g., flood in zones you prefer to avoid) by scanning bordereau submissions against evolving appetites.

Event response. For cat events, Doc Chat prioritizes impacted policies and reported claims, flags under-reserved items, and compiles early view reports with cited sources.

Model-ready extracts. Generate standardized feeds for cat modeling and RDS reporting, with improved geocode quality and peril coding consistency.

Compliance automation. Automate checks for regional regulations and reporting formats. Keep outputs aligned with Solvency II and IFRS 17 template needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Doc Chat automate reinsurance bordereau validation across multiple languages and formats?

Yes. Doc Chat is built to AI process international bordereau files regardless of language or layout. It maps local headers to your canonical fields, normalizes currency and dates, and validates entries against treaty clauses and endorsements.

What document types can the system handle?

In addition to reinsurance bordereau (various languages), premium & claims bordereau schedules, and global treaty documentation, Doc Chat processes statements of account (SOA), cover notes and slips, endorsements, notices of loss (NOL) packets, loss run reports, and schedules of values (SOV). It also handles scanned PDFs via OCR with page-level citations.

How does Doc Chat manage exceptions?

Every exception carries a reason code and cites the original cell/page and relevant clause. Exception reports can be exported for cedent follow-up, and workflows can be configured to auto-route specific exceptions to internal owners or back to cedents.

Can it reconcile to finance?

Doc Chat recalculates brokerage, taxes/levies, and profit commission, checks FX conversions, and reconciles movements to SOA entries. Differences are flagged with evidence.

How quickly can we go live?

Most International Portfolio Managers are live in 1–2 weeks. We begin with high-impact treaties and expand across the portfolio.

Proof That Speed and Accuracy Can Coexist

Traditional automation struggled with document inconsistency. As we detail in The End of Medical File Review Bottlenecks, large language models changed the game by enabling inference across varied formats. For reinsurance, this means your team can trust the machine to catch what used to be missed on page 1,500 of a policy packet—or row 25,000 in a bordereau.

What It Feels Like to Work with Doc Chat

International Portfolio Managers tell us the experience shifts from reactive firefighting to proactive steering:

Before: “We hope the cedent’s new template maps. We’ll see if we can get through France and Japan before Friday’s accumulation meeting.”

After: “Files land. Exceptions are auto-flagged with citations. We export validated tables to the warehouse by lunch, then spend the afternoon deciding how to rebalance aggregates and retro.”

The difference is not merely operational—it is strategic. Faster, cleaner data shrinks the gap between what’s happening in your book and how quickly you can respond.

Get Started

If you’re ready to automate reinsurance bordereau validation and free your team from the monthly grind, see how quickly Doc Chat can transform your process. Visit Doc Chat for Insurance and schedule a conversation with our team. In 1–2 weeks, you can move from manual spreadsheets to an explainable, automated pipeline that scales with your ambitions.

Key Takeaways for the International Portfolio Manager

- Doc Chat ingests and validates multi-language, multi-format bordereaux at scale, mapping to your schema and cross-checking against treaties and endorsements.
- Real-time Q&A and page-level citations build trust and dramatically speed up decisions.
- Time savings, cost reductions, and accuracy improvements accrue across the entire international Property & Homeowners book.
- White glove onboarding and a 1–2 week implementation timeline mean measurable ROI this quarter.