Every answer and its explanation appears here once you have finished the path. Each one then links to the matching glossary entry, where the concept is set out in full with its worked example.
1. Two programs carry the same priority on the same portfolio and produce recoveries differing tenfold. What separates them?
The definition of a loss: depending on whether the priority applies to each risk hit or to everything one event destroyed, the same priority amount is paid once or two hundred times
A layer says nothing until you define what it calls a loss, and it is that definition, never the size of the priority, that decides what the cedant bears. The three other answers name parameters that matter and all act afterward: reinstatements bound capacity once you know how many times the priority applies, the inception date files losses into a year, and the panel settles what is due. None can produce a tenfold gap on the same facts.
Glossary entry →2. An insurer holds a per-risk layer and believes it is covered against storm. What is it actually covered against?
Against one large individual loss, never against an event that makes many small ones: each policy hit is compared alone to the priority
A storm damaging two hundred separately insured houses produces two hundred losses, each compared to the priority, and if that priority sits well above the individual amounts the layer pays nothing while the cedant has lost a great deal. The three other answers concede cover and argue its terms, which is how the belief survives. A per-risk deductible describes the priority itself under another name. An overall limit caps a recovery that does not exist. And the hours clause is the instrument of a PER-EVENT layer: putting it on a per-risk layer does not change what is compared to the priority.
Glossary entry →3. What does an hours clause add to a per-event layer, and why does a cedant often carry several?
It fixes a window within which all losses from the designated peril count as one occurrence, and the durations follow the physical duration of the peril: a cedant therefore carries one clause per peril family
Seventy-two hours for wind, one hundred and sixty-eight for slower perils: the durations are not an accounting convenience, they follow the peril, which is why one program carries several. Confusing two clauses when reporting a loss is a common and costly error. The three other answers turn a rule of CHARACTERIZATION into a rule of procedure, availability or attribution. All three describe mechanisms that exist elsewhere, and none touches what the clause does: decide how many times the priority applies.
Glossary entry →4. Two safeguards bound the cedant's right to split a sequence. Which, and what do they protect against?
The window is fixed on dated facts and does not slide as estimates evolve; and one loss cannot fall into two windows. They make the clause an instrument of characterization and not of optimization
The right to place the window is worth real money, and these two bounds are what stop it becoming an after the fact adjustment: a reinsurer seeing a window slide as estimates evolve would have every reason to dispute it. The answer on prior approval removes from the cedant a right the treaty grants it precisely. The one requiring opening at the first damage abolishes the choice itself, when continuity of the window is the only formal constraint. The one requiring a third party body describes a wording that exists in some treaties and is not a general safeguard.
Glossary entry →5. In what order does a cedant decide whether to report a sequence as one occurrence or two?
After doing both calculations: two occurrences mean two priorities paid, but also twice the limit available if reinstatements allow. You do not report in the order of the days
The ability to split cuts both ways, and the calculation is made before reporting: on an episode far above the top of the program two occurrences are often better; on an average one, almost always a single. The answer following the order of the days describes the natural reflex and gives up the choice. The one always preferring a single occurrence keeps the most visible quantity, the priority, and forgets the one that really binds, the limit. The one deferring to the adjuster confuses establishing facts, which is their job, with a contractual characterization, which is the cedant's.
Glossary entry →