Bordereau in Insurance: Types, Uses and How Reporting Works

A bordereau in insurance is a detailed report exchanged between insurance partners (insurers, reinsurers, MGAs and coverholders) that documents the policies written, premium collected, or claims paid during a set period. It's the main way a capacity provider stays informed about business being conducted on its behalf, and it remains one of the most important, and most misunderstood, data-sharing tools in the industry.

If you work in reinsurance or delegated authority, you've dealt with bordereaux. The term still trips people up, and the reporting process itself causes real headaches across the market. Here is a plain breakdown of what a bordereau is, the different types, who prepares and reads one, what goes into it, and why the way it gets produced matters as much as what it contains.

What is a bordereau in insurance?

A bordereau is a detailed report that documents insurance transactions between two parties. It gives the receiving party a structured view of the policies written, premium collected, or claims paid over a reporting period.

The word is French, from bord, meaning edge or border, and in commercial French it has long meant an itemized list or schedule. In insurance it now means a formal reporting document exchanged between partners, usually on a fixed cadence and in a format the underlying agreement specifies.

Bordereau vs. bordereaux: what is the difference?

The only difference is number. Bordereaux is the plural of bordereau, and both are pronounced the same way ("bor-duh-ROH"). A coverholder sends one bordereau for a given month and class of business, and a managing agent reviewing a year of delegated business is reading bordereaux. In Lloyd's-market shorthand you'll often see both written as BDX.

Where bordereaux are used: reinsurance and delegated authority

Bordereau reporting shows up in two main contexts.

The first is reinsurance. When a primary insurer transfers part of its risk to a reinsurer, it has to keep that reinsurer informed about what has been written and what has been paid out. The bordereau is how that information travels. The ceding company prepares it, and the reinsurer uses it to track exposure and manage reserves.

The second is delegated authority, and it is where bordereau reporting is most common today. In a delegated authority arrangement, an insurer grants a Managing General Agent (MGA) or coverholder the authority to write policies and handle claims on its behalf. The MGA then reports back to the insurer through regular bordereaux.

According to Lloyd's of London, delegated authority business accounts for over 40% of Lloyd's total premium volume, which gives a sense of the scale involved. Firms working under this model, particularly MGAs, independent adjusting firms and TPAs handling delegated claims for several carriers, typically rely on a claims system to keep that reporting accurate and on schedule.

In both cases the bordereau does the same basic job. It gives the capacity provider a clear view of the business being conducted in its name.

Who prepares and uses a bordereau?

Bordereau reporting involves a handful of recurring roles, and it helps to know who sits on each side of the exchange:

• The preparer. Usually the ceding insurer (in reinsurance) or the MGA or coverholder (in delegated authority). The preparer is the party actually writing policies or handling claims day to day. Where claims handling is delegated again, to a TPA, the TPA often produces the claims bordereau.
• The recipient. The reinsurer or the capacity-providing insurer. The recipient uses the bordereau to monitor exposure, validate premium due, and check reserve adequacy.
• Compliance and audit teams. On both sides, reviewing bordereaux against the underlying policy or claim files to confirm the data reconciles.
• Actuarial and finance teams. They use bordereau data to calculate loss ratios, set reserves, and forecast results.

Carriers, self-insured programs, captives and government risk pools all sit on the recipient side of the relationship in different ways, which is why bordereau accuracy is a shared problem across most of the industry, not only a concern for Lloyd's syndicates.

Premium, claims and risk bordereaux

There are two primary types of bordereau, and some agreements add a third.

A premium bordereau covers the financial side of the relationship. It lists the policies written during the reporting period, with the associated premiums, commission, taxes and net amounts due to the insurer. Some agreements distinguish a "written" bordereau (policies bound, regardless of payment) from a "paid" bordereau (cash actually received). Both matter, and they tell different stories about the health of a portfolio.

A claims bordereau covers losses. It details every claim reported during the period, including the date of loss, amounts paid, outstanding reserves and current status. Insurers rely on it to calculate loss ratios, monitor their delegated claims administrators, and confirm reserves are adequate. Without accurate claims bordereaux, an insurer has no real view of how the business is performing.

A risk bordereau describes the specific risks underwritten rather than the money moving. It's particularly common in property portfolios, where an insurer needs to understand geographic exposure and check that the MGA isn't writing risks outside the agreed scope.

What data goes into a bordereau?

The exact fields vary by agreement and class of business, but a standard bordereau typically includes:

• For premium reporting: policy numbers, insured names, inception and expiry dates, gross written premium, commission, taxes, and net premium due.
• For claims reporting: claim numbers, associated policy numbers, date of loss, date reported, cause of loss, amounts paid, reserve amounts, and claim status.

For business written in the Lloyd's market, the Lloyd's Coverholder Reporting Standards set out a widely used framework for what these reports should contain. If you're setting up a bordereau process from scratch, they're a sound reference point.

Those standards have been revised across several versions, and the Core Data Record is reshaping what London expects to receive, so check which version your agreement names before you build a template around it.

Why manual bordereau reporting creates problems for insurers

Most bordereaux are still exchanged as spreadsheets. Each MGA sends its own version, in its own format, on its own schedule. The insurer then has to clean the data by hand, reformat it, validate it and load it into its own systems before it can do anything useful with it.

The concrete problems follow from there:

• Data arrives late, so the insurer is always looking at last month's picture rather than what is happening now.
• Errors aren't caught until someone reviews the file by hand, and by then the mistake may already have affected reserving or compliance reporting.
• When the data doesn't match, both sides spend time chasing corrections instead of managing the business.

There's a regulatory side too. An insurer cannot delegate its regulatory responsibility to an MGA. In the UK, the FCA holds the principal firm accountable for everything written under its authority, so poor bordereau data is more than an operational nuisance. It is a governance failure. The FCA's thematic review of delegated authority in general insurance, TR15/7, flagged exactly this, finding weak oversight of delegated arrangements across the market.

Lloyd's has raised the same bar from its side. As of January 1, 2026, Lloyd's made Claims Management a hurdle Principle (Principle 4). The Principles bind managing agents, and delegated claims administrators (DCAs) and coverholders carry it through the managing agent's oversight, audit and reporting requirements.

For those reasons more carriers, TPAs and adjusting firms are moving bordereau production out of spreadsheets and into a claims system that produces the report from the underlying claim and policy data, rather than reconstructing it after the fact.

How software fixes the bordereau reporting process

The right software removes most of the manual work. Instead of waiting for a spreadsheet to arrive and then spending hours cleaning it, the data is captured and structured on the claim as the work happens: at first notice of loss, as reserves move, as payments go out, and when the file closes. The bordereau becomes a view of records that already exist, not a document someone assembles at month end.

On VCA, Lloyd's bordereau reporting is native to the platform. You set up the Unique Market Reference (UMR) once and bordereaux auto-populate per claim, for both individual-risk and subscription market business.

In-house terms, including reserve classifications, are mapped to Lloyd's terms once at setup, and the system converts them on every report.

LloydsConnect produces the Lloyd's report set: the Lloyd's Standard Bordereau, the Lloyd's Standard Bordereau with Certificate Allocation, the Lloyd's Management Information (MI) report, and the Lloyd's Solvency report.

One limit is worth knowing before you shop. VCA produces the claims bordereau. It is not the system that produces a premium or risk bordereau. Those report what was written and the money due on it, and they come from the system that writes the business.

The practical result is that claim handlers spend their time on claims rather than on fixing spreadsheets, and the insurer gets a consistent view of its delegated portfolio. For a managing agent, the same records become oversight: every reserve change, contact and payment its delegated administrators make, in structured data, the day it happens. See how it works on the bordereau reporting software page, what the Lloyd's side involves on the Lloyd's claims management page, and how one Lloyd's DCA runs it in the Lloyd's DCA bordereau reporting case study.

Frequently asked questions

Is bordereau reporting mandatory?

It depends on the agreement. Reinsurance treaties and delegated authority contracts typically set bordereau reporting requirements directly, including format, frequency, and required data fields. Some smaller or simpler agreements allow summary reporting instead, but bordereaux are the industry standard wherever meaningful risk is being delegated.

How often are bordereaux submitted?

Most bordereau agreements call for monthly or quarterly submission, though the exact cadence is set in the underlying reinsurance treaty or delegated authority agreement. Claims bordereaux are sometimes reported more often than premium bordereaux, especially for higher-severity lines of business.

What does BDX mean in insurance?

BDX is shorthand for bordereau (and bordereaux), used widely in Lloyd's market communications and in coverholder reporting standards.

Can bordereau reporting be automated?

Yes. Rather than compiling bordereaux by hand from spreadsheets, insurers, MGAs and TPAs increasingly produce them directly from their claims system, drawing structured data from the claim and policy records instead of reconstructing a report after the fact. The bordereau reporting software page shows how VCA does it.

Final thoughts

Bordereau reporting has lasted for generations because the underlying need is real. Partners sharing risk need a shared view of that risk. The concept has never been the problem. The process has. A claims system that holds the data on the claim as the work happens makes it possible to get the report right without the manual overhead that has made bordereaux so frustrating for so long.

Want to see cleaner bordereau reporting on your own programs? Request a demo and we'll walk you through it.